developing your audience through a "world worthy of devotion"
….and if you don't want to watch the video, this is what I said:
Once you have the reader's attention you have to engage her and keep her coming back for more. That's why storytelling is so important, and a good author platform tells its own story as it grows and evolves along with the author. The readers get to be part of that journey and participate in it and even co-create it.
New forms of technology create – after an initial period of resistance – new forms of storytelling, and the Internet is seeing the rise of transmedia storytelling or what Frank Rose terms "deep media". Narratives are no longer so linear. Different strands of a single story can be told across multiple platforms at the same time, through books and TV and games and movies, which leads to a deeply immersive experience and creates what a friend of mine referred to as a "world worthy of devotion".
How can you turn your author platform into a "world worthy of devotion?" How can you turn your platform into a story you're telling through multiple platforms, whether it's blogs and tweets and videos and podcasts and pictures and any other form of media that strikes your fancy and plays to your particular strengths? Each platform is an opportunity to reveal a different side of both yourself and your "big meaning".
Perhaps the new challenge of the 21st century storyteller is how to turn yourself into the most interesting story of all.
