Visitors browse books at the StoryDrive Asia exhibition on May 29. [Photo by Sun Ye/China Daily]

The secret to making it in the age of new media is interaction, especially more one-on-one interaction, panelists agreed at StoryDrive Asia, the Frankfurt Book Fair’s all-media international forum held in Beijing recently.

"The secret is involving the audience," said Triona Cambell, a producer at Irish studio beActive Media.

In popular games and other successful multimedia products she oversees, the audience gets to choose the next steps characters will take, to write and vote for their favorite story endings and engage in every step of the chain of production from websites to feature films.

"The best fans are those who invest and believe in the characters, even if they know they’re fictional," she said.

"The key is communication, two-way, not one-way," said Martina Stawski, who with her husband Simon Stawski developed the eatyourkimchi website and blog on their life in Korea.

They have nearly a million followers, whose comments, questions and proposals often get direct responses from the couple. "Old media is passive consumption, new media is active consumption," Martina Stawski said.

This year’s focus for StoryDrive Asia was transmedia and cross-cultural storytelling. The event was held in association with the Third China (Beijing) International Fair for Trade in Services from May 28 to June 1 in Beijing.

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