Checking in with The Literary Platform

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): What is The Literary Platform?

Sophie Rochester: The Literary Platform is a new online magazine dedicated to showcasing literary projects across all platforms. We’re taking a long, hard stare at the middle of that literature and technology Venn diagram, but also looking at literary projects launching on other platforms like the Underwood project on vinyl. The aim is to highlight these projects and also to bring together comment from industry figures and key thinkers in this area.

We noticed the surge of interest from publishers, literary agents, literary magazines, writers and developers in bringing the traditional book format to new platforms and thought it would be interesting to demonstrate the range of creative literary initiatives being launched in this important area. It’s such a rapidly changing industry and we hope the Literary Platform site will also act as an archive to capture this exciting time for posterity!

The Literary Platform is based in London but showcases projects from all  over the world and has readers in 88 countries (cough – thanks Google Analytics…).

What part does technology play in the expression of art? The writing of fiction? Do you see the medium as working well with non-fiction too. (Why/Why not?)

Technology has played a huge part in allowing more writers to find wider audiences. The key word circulating in book publishing at the moment is ‘experiment’. Traditional publishers and developers are experimenting with multimedia formats, established authors are going it alone, first-time novelists are bypassing publishers and niche literary magazines are finding their readers. It’s such an interesting time. What I’ve loved about this project is finding out about projects on the other side of the world like Paper Radio. What is also interesting is that despite the proliferation of new fiction online, writers still hanker after the print book deal with an established publisher. We’re seeing a lot of projects that are launched online, writers getting noticed and then picked up by traditional publishers. Perhaps at some point that cycle will change too.

How did you come to work with technology as part of your medium?

The internet was the natural home for The Literary Platform – most of our readers have found us through twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. But ironically I would love to see The Literary Platform in print. I might ask Newspaper Club to do a special edition for TOC Frankfurt…

Anything else you’d like to tell us about the group, your project, and yourself here.

I’m going to turn this question around and say ‘is there anything you would like to tell me?’ We want to capture as many projects as possible in this area so do please (Fictionaut users) contact us if you have a project that you think would be relevant to our readers.

I’d also like to add that the site is beautifully designed by  the lovely Sam Oakley.

And you can follow us on twitter @TheLitPlatform.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.