(Note: This is part III of a four-part blog post. For part one, a profile of author Kate Pullinger, click here. For part two, a profile of Lisa Holton, click here. The blog posts are slightly edited from the original article, written for the November 2009 issue of the Queensland Writers Centre's Writer's Quarterly Magazine.)

Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner EntertainmentJeff Gomez is CEO of Starlight Runner Entertainment and a leading creator of highly successful fictional worlds (he doesn't like to brag, but he had something to do with a little movie called Avatar). He is an expert at cross-platform intellectual property development and transmedia storytelling, as well as at extending niche properties such as toys, animation, or video game titles into the global mass market.

How does Jeff define transmedia storytelling? Jeff points out that, by definition, this narrative form should invite its audience to participate in the narrative in some way, stating: "This can range from providing a forum for readers or viewers to express their opinions, all the way to giving them a way to contribute creatively to the canon of the author’s fictional universe. Without this offer of dialog, it’s not transmedia."

Narratives that work best in this format, Jeff says, are ones that "lend themselves to vast expansion" and Jeff takes inspiration from Tolkien. "He supplemented his novels with maps, languages, poetry, illustrations – all of it added up to a universe that felt as real as it was emotionally compelling for me. I just think you have to take the world that you’ve established in your fiction very seriously … although we do a lot of stuff that appeals to kids, this isn’t kid stuff. It’s not easy to do … once you’ve nailed your mythology down, transmedia storytelling is a cinch."

Like Kate Pullinger and Lisa Holton, Jeff believes book publishers (or ‘media packagers’) are just beginning to feel their way through transmedia innovation, but he hopes they will soon jump in full force:

"From my perspective anyone who’s trying anything at all gets a gold star. I think it’s more a matter of who is dipping their toe in the pool and who is committing to make the big dive ... none of the big [publishing] houses have climbed to the higher boards … [they] will have to fundamentally shift their business models to leverage transmedia in ways that record companies failed to do. There is precious little time left for the majors to engage this, but the ones who do this successfully will once again become major players.

"Artists and writers are only beginning to experiment with transmedia. It’s the equivalent of rubbing two sticks together. On the other hand, I certainly appreciate what certain authors and packagers have been doing. Starlight Runner had long conversations with Lisa Holton when The 39 Clues was barely a glimmer in her eyes, and The Amanda Project is actually the real payoff to that thinking in my opinion. Publishers who’ve placed their bets on Jordan Weisman (Cathy’s Book, the upcoming Lost Souls) are seeing fascinating and fairly profitable projects being realised."

Given the slow rate at which publishers appear to be adopting transmedia/multiple-channel storytelling, does Jeff think authors would be better-served to bypass the publishers and just publish to the web?

"I think if they were ever going to, now is the time. I admit I’ve been baffled by how and why publishers have dragged their feet on concerted multi-platform strategies around the intellectual properties that they take in by the thousand each year. It isn’t ignorance, it’s active resistance!

So if I was an author who had an innovative way to communicate my long-form text-based narrative, yes, I might lose my patience with publishers and do a little direct marketing and distribution via the internet … in short, I would make it as much like sitting around a campfire with a whole bunch of friends telling them a story and watching their response and tweaking my delivery to that response as possible … that being said … there is nothing that generates more respect and grants more rights and revenues back to the creator than traditionally published books."

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Jeff Gomez will be a keynote speaker at this year's O'Reilly Tools of Change conference, and I'm very much looking foward to hearing what he has to say! For more information on TOC, click here.