James Frey looks to link novels with videogames
Book-packaging company Full Fathom Five, owned by the author of bestselling pseudo-memoir A Million Little Pieces, is looking to release books and video games in tandem, starting with young adult novel The Nightworld.
A new chapter is being added to the James Frey saga.
Though he is best known as the author of the bestselling pseudo-memoir A Million Little Pieces—and for the on-air tongue-lashing he received from Oprah Winfrey over its fabrications—Mr. Frey has spent the past three years becoming a “transmedia” entrepreneur.
That career move takes a new turn this week. In what Mr. Frey describes as a first for a publishing venture, his SoHo-based book-packaging company Full Fathom Five has produced a young adult novel, The Nightworld, in tandem with a videogame from Glu Mobile, based in San Francisco.
The e-book edition was released by HarperCollins last week, and The Nightworld social mobile game will be available Thursday as an application for iPad and iPhone. The works have come out of a partnership that Glu Mobile and Full Fathom Five formed last spring.
Mr. Frey describes the novel, written by Jack Blaine, as the “origin story” for a game about a world plunged into permanent darkness. But the more original part of the project may have to do with how the book and the game have been designed to promote each other.