The Atavist a boutique publishing house

http://atavist.net/profile/

The Atavist is a boutique publishing house producing original nonfiction stories for digital, mobile reading devices. We like to think of Atavist pieces as a new genre of nonfiction, a digital form that lies in the space between long narrative magazine articles and traditional books and e-books. Publishing them digitally and offering them individually—a bit like music singles in iTunes—allows us to present stories longer and in more depth than typical magazines, less expensive and more dynamic than traditional books.


Most importantly, it gives us new ways to tell some inventive, captivating, cinematic journalism—and new ways for you to experience it.

The stories: All of our stories are researched, reported and crafted by experienced longform reporters and writers who’ve spent months chasing them down. The topics may vary, but every Atavist story will be a narrative—around a crime, a scientific mystery, an adventure, or any other human drama—with characters and events. Pieces are laced with photography, sound, and video, where appropriate (and as the device allows). Each one will be edited and fact-checked. But Atavist stories aren’t static: Some may evolve in response to our readers, or simply expand and change as new facts come to light. Some may even involve the readers in the story itself.

The medium: Atavist stories are entirely digital creations, with no glossy paper and no hard cover. That allows us to do some things we couldn’t otherwise—within our own apps—like including a free audiobook version of every one, and allowing you to flip back and forth between text and audio while the story keeps your place. In addition to each story’s unique collection of video and other media, inside the Atavist apps they have what we call inline content: maps, timelines, character lists, primary documents, and links. You can turn on the inline content to find out what’s behind the story, or leave it off to read completely distraction-free. We think each of our narratives will make a great read, regardless of whether you read it on a Kindle or in our own app.

The model: Fully outfitted stories are available for $2.99 each through the Atavist app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. (We’re aiming for Android devices next.) Full text and photo versions of the stories are available for $1.99 through Amazon.com’s Kindle Singles collection and on the Nook. All of the proceeds are shared between The Atavist and the author.

Our friends and partners:

The Atavist is proud to be affiliated with, or in some cases just in friendly philosophical agreement with, the following organizations:

Kindle Singles

Pop-Up Magazine

Byliner.com (coming soon!)

Longreads

Longform.org

Readability (all excerpts on The Atavist site are designed to be Readability friendly)