Guest blogger Lisa Holton is the CEO of Fourth Story Media, a new media company that tells stories that unfold across books, the web, mobile phones, and other forms of media. Fourth Story Media’s first series – The Amanda Project - is now live, and the first book Invisible I hit stores last month.

I grew up in traditional children’s publishing, and have had the privilege of working with many extraordinary authors, illustrators, editors and designers–the small villages that create beautiful books. I love books. I love the way they look on the shelf and the way they feel in your hands. I love the physical act of reading–curling up on the couch with a great read, and losing yourself in the story. Many kids feel the same way, and thanks to First Book, many more kids are getting the opportunity to experience reading their own books every day.

Over the last several years, I spent a great deal of time thinking about how our readers interact with technology in profoundly different ways than we do. With each new generation, that relationship becomes more pronounced. I started asking myself, how do we keep traditional book publishing alive and thriving in this age? Is there a way to marry our art forms to online and digital media in a way that makes sense to readers? It was out of these ideas and some encouragement from friends and colleagues–most notably Lorraine Shanley and Ariel Aberg-Riger–that Fourth Story Media was born.

Our first series is a mystery for teens about an enigmatic girl named Amanda Valentino who shows up at Endeavor High School one Halloween, and disappears the following spring. The story is told by different YA authors–kicked off by Melissa Kantor, author of Invisible I– across an 8-book series (being published by HarperCollins) as well as an interactive website where we invite readers to log on and actually become a character in the story. On the website – www.theamandaproject.com – they create character profiles, write in their characters voice, debate clues, and submit art. We continuously weave in their contributions both online (within the weekly stories we publish), as well in the books themselves (the first book includes a beautiful essay written by Lisa Sturm – a 17-year-old from Texas, and one of our first members, who dreams of someday becoming a published author!).

Like many ideas, The Amanda Project came out of a bunch of different, seemingly disparate threads. We were interested in inviting talented authors to collaborate on an ongoing narrative; we wanted to see if we could publish a story that would allow interactivity and reader participation, and we were thinking about how girls use technology to express themselves.

So far, our readers have been AMAZING in their participation. They are completely immersing themselves in Amanda’s world, and constantly submitting really impressive writing and art. If anything, we are continuously searching for additional avenues we can give them to create. For example, after a six-month period of beta testing in which we worked with a small group of about 100 girls, we added a new section to the site called The Zine where our readers can post and submit their writing to share with the community and receive feedback.

We’re also working with teachers and librarians to develop ways that The Amanda Project can be used as a creative reading and writing tool in classrooms. At www.theamandaidentitykit.com you can download resources (including discussion questions, lesson plans, and templates) to use with your students and young readers.

We’re always looking for feedback, ideas, thoughts, and comments. Feel free to get in touch – either in the comments here, or at info@fourthstorymedia.com – and let us know what you think!