A New Platform Comes to Town . . .

Just last week I was grousing about the exclusivity and the egregious contract connected with with Apple’s iBooks Author.

Now I hear that Atavist, better known for long-form journalism and for producing original fiction to be read on hand-held devices, is on the cusp of releasing their new software, which (they say) will do everything that iBooks Author will do, only on damn near every platform known to humankind.

Here’s the scoop, according to Atavist’s own page:

Anyone can use it: Assemble publications (books, stories, reports, newsletters, etc.), design them, add multimedia, and rapidly export these to a variety of mobile platforms. No design or programming expertise required!

Multidimensional storytelling: Periodic lets you create layers of storytelling—an audiobook, timelines, maps, video and audio clips, zoom-able images, photo galleries, and soundtracks. Just upload your media files, and the platform does the rest.

One-click publishing to multiple platforms: Periodic automatically tailors your content to the iPad, iPhone, iPod, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony, and (soon) Android, and will support new devices as they come to market.

Of course I have yet to see any reviews by anyone who has used the actual product yet, so users’ mileage may vary.  The whole thing may be a buggy catastrophe for ought that I know.

But if it works, it will be a huge self-publishing tool.  Not just for books, but for other multimedia projects, including (just for an example) alternate reality games.

And it may prove a major competitor for, say, Smashwords, who do much the same thing, but who charge a wee percentage for uploading to all those sites.  The Atavist program is not free (I assume), but you’re not paying royalties forever, either.