They publish. You decide.
In an age where choice trumps all, an old children's series called 'Choose Your Own Adventure' resurges -- with a new twist. OTIS HART caught up with its mastermind.
WAITSFIELD, Vt.
R.A. Montgomery, writer and founder of Chooseco. (AP Photo/Michael Hart)
You are R.A. Montgomery, creator of "Choose Your Own Adventure." You began a young reader phenomenon almost 30 years ago. Your books have sold hundreds of millions of copies.
Now the readers who grew up with your stories are becoming parents themselves. They'd love to give their children the same opportunity, but your books have been out of print for almost 10 years because your publishing company lost interest.
What should you do?
If you rest on your laurels and reminisce about the old days, don't bother turning the page.
If you ditch business as usual, start your own publishing company and sell another million on your own, keep reading.
Because for this septuagenarian, that's just the beginning.
ADVENTURES GALORE
"Choose Your Own Adventure" titles have sold at least 250 million copies around the world since the series debuted with Bantam Books in 1978, and anyone who remembers reading them probably knows why.
You were the protagonist. When you're 9 years old, that's a pretty exhilarating feeling. Your fate depended on the choices you made at the bottom of each page. Each installment had dozens of endings, and the more rabid fans (including yours truly) wanted to experience every one.
Depending on which book you chose, you could end up chasing abominable snowmen, waging war with the Evil Power Master, penetrating police states or learning the ways of the ninja.
It turns out the addiction was reciprocal, though for slightly different reasons.
"It really does stimulate kids to read and to think and to begin the process of making decisions -- to be responsible in a world that is demanding responsibility more so now than ever before," Montgomery said during an interview at his headquarters in Vermont.
Shannon Gilligan, Montgomery's wife and frequent "Adventure" author, heads up Chooseco, the publishing half of "Choose Your Own Adventure." In the three years since the duo decided to choose their own adventure, the loquacious Gilligan has almost single-handedly replaced the strong-armed publicity department of Random House, Bantam's mother ship.
When ownership of most of the "Adventure" titles reverted back to Montgomery in the late 1990s after the original pressings went out of print, Gilligan didn't intend to shun the traditional author-publisher relationship. But as she approached more and more industry Goliaths, she realized that "Adventure" stood to make more money as a David.
"We approached several major New York publishers and we even got offers from three of them," Gilligan said via e-mail. "But it was really clear from the offers that they did not 'get' Choose, nor did they see its huge potential on a re-launch to the original fans who were now becoming parents."
So Montgomery, Gilligan and their attorney Gordon Troy crunched a few numbers. To their surprise, Choose Your Own Adventure ranked second behind only Coca-Cola in a Harvard Business School study of positive brand recognition among 25- to 32-year-old readers. Nostalgia helped Montgomery's series score a 78 percent rating among that age group.
"The research company was so astounded with the numbers they got that they ran them twice," Gilligan said. "They couldn't believe that `Choose Your Own Adventure' had a recognition rating up there with Nike and Coke."
Montgomery decided to update and reissue 18 of the original Adventure books. The reward of turning this page far outweighed the risk.
LONE WOLF
"Everyone said you are crazy to do this yourself, that we weren't a publisher," Montgomery said. "We thought, `We believe in these books and we believe we can get them out there.'"
So far, getting the Adventures into young readers' hands hasn't been a problem. Montgomery has teamed up with Boston-based Sundance Publishing, which distributes books directly to schools, and used his two decades in the business to ship his stories directly to bookstores.
Scott Flora, Executive Director of the Small Publishing Association of North America, believes there's a lot more to Montgomery's plan than a cavalier business model.
"One reason to do something like this is they can make a lot more money," Flora says. "Let's say they get 50 cents to a dollar per book through a publishing company. By doing it themselves, they could get $3 a book."
Hmmm. If Montgomery and Gilligan stand to make $3 for every story, and they've shipped over 900,000 copies of their revamped lineup -- well, that sure looks like a happy ending.
Montgomery insists this isn't just about economics, though. "We wanted to have control over the rewrites, all the editing, all the interior art and the covers," he said.
The Adventure doesn't end here. Montgomery and Gilligan have even bigger plans for Chooseco. Interactive video games. Maybe even DVDs.
"We see the paradigm of interactive literature as being wider than just books itself," Montgomery said. "As we look at the electronic games that are out there right now, they are not cognitive. They are basically eye-hand coordination games. We believe that there is space for a truly open-ended cooperative cognitive electronic game."
Watch out, thirtysomethings. All that money your parents spent on Choose Your Own Adventure books was but a prelude. If Chooseco has its way, there will be even more adventures for the next generation.
Then again, the choice is yours.
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Otis Hart is an asap reporter.
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