Coliloquy markets interactive fiction for the Kindle

Readers of titles from Coliloquy can interact with authors, even vote how stories will end

Remember those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books? Well, it seems that now there's a digital version, as Coliloquy becomes the first publisher to release what they call "active and interactive" fiction, for the Kindle. The comany announced Tuesday the release of its interactive fiction platform, and the release of four adult and young adult romance series on sale in the Amazon Kindle Store.

"Coliloquy is about taking away the constraints of traditional publishing and giving authors the tools to create new types of digital fiction that simply aren't possible in a paper format," said Coliloquy's co-founder and CEO, Lisa Rutherford, in an interview. "Our launch authors are all using reader choice and serialization to create living series that can respond to reader tastes and input over time."

Interactive fiction has actually been around for a while now, since the mid-70s in print form, though the medium took off with the advent of computers, when the line between gaming and fiction began to blur with such properties as Zork, The Lost Treasures of Infocom, and Myst. One form of interactive fiction, the "visual novel," is a widely popular gaming platform in Japan, featuring titles like Rumbling Hearts, School Days, and Fate/stay night.

Interactive fiction seems to work just like how it sounds, the reader interacts with the storyline by activating "what if" storylines, change the world by interacting with the author through a voting platform, or re-reading key scenes from the perspective of different characters. Coliloquy considers their fiction to be an "active content application," as opposed to "static publishing files."

Coliloquy is a product of the Kindle Developer Program for Active Content and is currently available on Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle DX, and Kindle Keyboard devices.

The four titles currently running on the Coliloquy app are Witch’s Brew (The Spellspinners of Melas County) by Heidi R. Kling, Dead Letter Office (Parish Mail) by Kira Snyder, Arcania, Trial by Fire #1 (Arcania) by Liz Maverick, Getting Dumped by Tawna Fenske.

All four seem to have female protagonists, and at least three feature teen characters prominently. Sounds like Coliloquy knows their audience.

"We felt it was incredibly important to treat our authors as well as we treat our engineers, so instead of looking at publishing industry norms, we asked 'What's fair?'" said Rutherford, in response to my question about how the company compensates its authors. "As such, our author compensation is among the best in the industry. We share proceeds off our top-iline revenue, pay within 30 days, and leave print and subsidiary rights with our authors."

I also asked whether Amazon have exclusive distribution rights. "Amazon does not contractually have exclusive distribution rights," said Rutherford. "However, we made a choice to launch with them exclusively for several reasons: They own such a huge part of the market. Their merchandising engine is vastly superior to other platforms... We will certainly look to expand to other platforms, as demand dictates, but for now we are thrilled to be on Kindle."

"In terms of authors," said Rutherford, "we have nine signed and will be adding ~three per quarter."