A while back, Mark posted this review of the utterly brilliant young adult novel, GONE. I agreed with every word – in fact, I’d go so far as to say that GONE is one of the best books I’ve ever read.
When the book was released, the publisher, Egmont, made it available to read online for a few weeks – something that was considered to be a very bold move indeed. Well, the good news for those who haven’t yet read the book is that Egmont has decided to be bold again, and you can read GONE online again up until 31st October this year.
The presentation of the story online is utterly brilliant. When you first visit the site you’ll see a short video trailer, which seamlessly leads into a close up of the book’s cover. The cover opens, revealing the first page of the book, and from there the whole thing becomes interactive and you can start flipping through pages and reading the story. Even if you’ve already read the book, it’s worth taking a look at the site if only to see how impressively the whole thing has been put together.
Go visit www.gonebook.co.uk and check it out for yourself.
02/10/2009 at 1:38 pm Permalink
Haven’t read this yet, but I just took a peek at the online version – and that’s a great opening chapter!
02/10/2009 at 1:48 pm Permalink
still reading
it is getting good!
04/10/2009 at 2:02 pm Permalink
Why have they done it? Surely it cant be to increase sales because if you read it for free why buy it?
05/10/2009 at 7:14 pm Permalink
I’d imagine the thinking is that a lot of people might read the first few chapters and then want to buy the book so they can read the rest offline. Also, the sequel is coming out very soon, so if people do read the full thing online, they might then be tempted to go and buy the second book. Potentially they’re gaining lots of readers for book two who didn’t buy book one, but who enjoyed reading it online for free.
05/10/2009 at 7:14 pm Permalink
Plus it gets lots of nice publicity for the series when people post about it and discuss it on sites like this
24/01/2010 at 7:27 pm Permalink
Its really good the book. Plus I think the auther proberly sold his book to the website.