On November 24th, prolific author James Patterson will release House of Robots, his latest work of young-adult fiction. The book’s launch, however, won’t be limited to print. Four days after its arrival, Patterson and Collective Digital Studio will debut a web series of the same name, which will be available on the Fred YouTube channel.
House of Robots tells the story of Sammy, a fifth grader whose life changes when his mother invents an intrusive, error-prone robot named E. The web series, which is animated in a claymation style, will illustrate specific scenes from the book. Its trailer is now available on the recently-relaunched Fred channel, which has more than 2.3 million subscribers.
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The House of Robots web series continues an existing relationship between Collective DS and Patterson. The media company and the bestselling author are also working together to develop a web series version of Maximum Ride, Patterson’s highly successful series of YA novels.
Patterson isn’t the first big-name author to use YouTube as a promotional tool for a new book. In October, Lemony Snicket used a “choose-your-own-adventure” style series to drum up awareness for Shouldn’t You Be In School?, his most recent prequel to A Series of Unfortunate Events. As the literary and online video industries become more intertwined, expect these kinds of web series to become more common.
