Reading novels on Instagram stories, is this the future?
The New York Public Library transforms classical novels into Instagram stories
Mom, I'm on Instagram, but it's for school! It is a fact, with the digitalization of the world, our attention has notably decreased and it became much harder to consume offline content. In 2017 Quartz reported we could have read 200 books in the time we spend on social media per year. But what would you say if we combine both?
Collaborating with the creative agency Mother and famous illustrator Magoz, The New York Public Library purely rethinks the way of telling traditional stories. Founded back in 1895, the legendary NY Public Library has recently introduced its Insta Novels, allowing anyone to read some classical pieces of literature on Instagram Stories. This social initiative aims to reach a bigger audience and especially attract more teenagers to reading.
The Library has already published Lewis Carroll's famous Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with illustrations by Magoz, as well as Metamorphosis written by Kafka, containing illustrations of César Pelizer, the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman with illustrations created by Buck and other incredible masterpieces.
Beautiful animations and illustrations appearing time to time, which depend on a novel, make reading even more interesting. The stories normally disappear quite fast, but you can hold your thumb on the specially created space on the right bottom of the screen to hold the page and lift your thumb to turn to the next page. Also, all novels are stored in highlights, which the library calls "digital bookshelf" so you won't miss any of them!
Digital books are not a new concept, nonetheless, what NYPL has done is absolutely unique. It is yet unclear what exact impact it is to made on our society, nonetheless it is definitely a breakthrough!
