Fences Breaks New Ground for the Web-Based PressBooks™ Publishing Platform

Fences, the debut novel by popular US-based fanfiction author Laura Bontrager, will be the first novel on the PressBooks™ platform to be serialised for online reading on a subscription basis. PressBooks is a Canadian startup founded by publishing innovator Hugh McGuire.

“Laura’s readers are used to reading her fanfiction online, with new instalments appearing regularly. We’re going to continue in the same vein, making her novel available to readers in daily instalments over the course of a month or so,” says Anna von Veh, director of publisher Say Books.
The New Zealand-based publisher was one of the first to use the PressBooks platform when it was still in its beta stage, publishing the crime novel No-Brainer by Zirk van den Berg in 2011.

“We love using PressBooks for ebook production and jumped at the opportunity to also use it as a reader interface and an online reading platform for subscribers,” says Anna.

PressBooks founder Hugh McGuire said, “It’s been great to have creative publishers like Say Books thinking of new ways to use PressBooks. There are so many possibilities as we start to better understand digital book publishing, and in the end publishers like Say Books will drive innovation.”

How it works is that the first chapter is freely available to everyone – visit http://fences1saybooks.pressbooks.com/. At the end of the chapter, readers are invited to subscribe to gain access to further chapters as they are released online. Becoming a subscriber entails paying an amount of their choosing via a link to PayPal. They are then given access to the Fences subscriber website on PressBooks, where a new chapter of the book will be uploaded daily, starting on 13 April 2012. Any subscriber who pays $5 or more is also eligible for a copy of the eBook when it’s complete.

Readers are welcome to comment at the end of each chapter, creating the opportunity for interaction with Laura and some interactive development of the text.

At the end of the process, the book will be published as an eBook, sold via e-stores such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. It will also be available directly from www.saybooksonline.com.

Fences tells the story of Emma Fox, a sculptor from San Francisco who travels to Tennessee at the invitation of the grandfather she has never met. She doesn’t like him much, but as for his farm manager... Emma discovers that falling in love is the easy part – staying there is the adventure.

ENDS