Visual Editions

Great Looking Stories

Editions at Play

Here’s the low down. Editions at Play is the brainchild of Visual Editions and Google’s Creative Lab. There will be a sprawling Library of Possibilities and the books we make will be distributed by Google Play Books. We’re aiming for (at least some of it) to launch later this year, in the Autumn.

The idea behind it is to create a place to showcase, celebrate, and bring out digital books that are immersive and were written and developed with the idea of being digital. A place that makes the most of technology, that pushes the reading experience, that you can read wherever you are. A place that is, hopefully, absolutely pioneering and innovative. Phewey.

In our minds, rather than trying to work within the usual e-book constraints, which plenty of people and places already do, Editions at Play will have a URL that transports readers to a digital location or even into the real world (well why not?), or chase you across the internet; we imagine digital literature that has no beginning or no end, or landscapes that can travel in any direction or have any number of characters, plots, side plots and inventions. We like the idea of books that mutate or disappear, that change depending on readers’ circumstance or location, or books that let you uncover material through different kinds of challenges.

There are many many ways we can explore the vessel, and the context of reading without damaging the integrity of the reading experience. In fact, we hope, we believe, quite the contrary.

How long will the books be? How will the writing influence the technology and how might that work the other way around? The thing is we don’t know yet. What we do know is that Editions at Play demands a different approach than everything to do with how we approach the making of physical books.

We have a great mix of authors on board with projects ranging from a story that changes, a story that takes sides, a story within a story and a story that builds the future.

And you can see some of Universal Everything’s early visuals to give you a tantalising taster for how it’s probably going to look. Oh and so much more. Can’t wait to show and share more. Once we know more. Soon.

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PS It’s about time too we make active our inactive Instagram account, and we thought when better than next week when we’re in Australia working with the Google team.