Sean Platt and David Wright, author-partners at the Collective Inkwell, are HUGE fans of serialized fiction, especially TV series such as LOST, Homicide, The Wire, Carnivale, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Deadwood, FRINGE, and a ton of other great shows. Both Sean and Dave have wanted to write TV shows since forever.
After spending several years ghostwriting, they finally decided to bring what they loved about TV to books: powerful stories, great characters, and killer WTF endings.
Big Publishing had more or less given up on serialized books, even after Stephen King found success with serializing The Green Mile. But once Amazon gave authors the keys the roads that made it relatively easy to reach readers directly, Sean and Dave decided they’d finally write a serial.
The Collective Inkwell aimed to be the HBO or AMC for the eBook generation. They started by changing the language for the market, referring to their books as “episodes” and “seasons.”
Like their favorite scripted television, each of their episodes would drive the series mythology forward, while revealing more about the characters readers love and advancing the story. Each episode also ended with a WTF? cliffhanger ending designed to “open a wound” the reader couldn’t wait to close the following week.
They launched the post-apocalyptic serial thriller Yesterday’s Gone in the fall of 2011, and in the first week of November, had the Number One Free Horror title on Amazon with Episode One. The free title introduced them to thousands of new readers and their paid books began to sell better than ever as readers immediately took notice.
Sean understood that no religion is every other week, and that for serialization to work in a way it had never worked before, episodes had to be published each week. The duo launched the second season of Yesterday’s Gone in January 2012, and have since published a new episode of their reader loved (and eagerly anticipated) series each Tuesday.
The Collective Inkwell currently publishes seven separate series:
Yesterday’s Gone
ForNevermore
WhiteSpace
Available Darkness
Dark Crossings
Together With Amazon’s 47North
Z 2134
Monstrous