by Luigi Galluccio - Politecnico di Torino

The evolution of publishing in recent years is noticed by all, but who or what has changed more the editorial process? It was influenced not only by the digital world but also by Internet. Let us think for example of the modern social platform able to generate in a short time a huge quantity of text enviable by every publishing house. This article shows an example on how, thanks to the web, a social writing platform is able to offer free new forms of narrative which are born, grown and sold directly online. “THE iNCIPT” - http://www.theincipit.com - found in 2011, is the first Italian online platform dealing with interactive stories, where readers are the leaders. It is a place between game and narrative. You have to choose a category first: if you are a reader you can continue incomplete stories and if you choose to be a writer you can start with a new one. In the first case you find stories sorted by category (there are ten categories, from Fanta-scientific to pink novel) or by date, from more recent to older ones. Once selected your favourite incipit, you can start reading, till to a question that stops the story.

For each question three alternatives are proposed, able to completely change the story, and you have to select one of them. The writer thus will continue the story based on the choices made by the community (audience of readers of his novel). The avid user of a story may decide to follow it (Twitter-style) in order to keep informed on the subsequent updates.

For writers the platform is very interesting. They have to challenge to involve as wide a readership as possible and to transform the reading in interactive writing. In such a  way the platform triggers the game interactions, because the number of readers, the votes and the comments of a story define the “iNCIPOINTS”, a score that guarantees visibility and awards to the writer. These awards are:

1. 1. Promotion: the story is shared on the most popular social networks, in newsletters, press releases, and sector events. Above all the profile of the user and his stories are shown to the most important publishers.
   2. Graphics: a shape and colours are given to the stories and the covers and custom graphics are drawn.
   3. e-book: free e-book of the best stories are published periodically , with a special edition license plates “THE iNCIPT”.
   4. Close-up: the story is placed in the homepage and in other parts of the site for maximum visibility.

This digital publishing experiment of social writing has received excellent references on the web and not only - http://www.theincipit.com/press/ . But the real strenght of the platform, in which successful publishers go in search of new talents, lies in the format: a new form of collaborative digital publishing, able to give voice to new generations of digital writers promoting the most interesting stories, thanks to an effective gamification process.