About the Hyperliterature Exchange

The Exchange was launched in Summer 2003. Its purpose was to review and provide an online directory of hyperliterature (digital literature, new media writing, etc) for sale, with links to where it could be bought.

At the time hyperliterature was difficult to find: most of it was published on websites, it was usually built using things like HTML, JavaScript and Macromedia Flash, and it was usually produced by individuals or small groups - or in some cases academic institutions - rather than commercial publishers.

With the coming of the i-Pad, however, a couple of big changes took place. First of all Apple decided not to support Flash on their devices, which pulled the rug out from under a large number of experimental writers working on interactive and multi-media forms at the time. Secondly, there was suddenly a huge marketplace for apps, which could be viewed not only on the i-Pad and other tablets but on smartphones too. Numerous commercially-developed reading apps began to appear, especially for children - Peppa Pig was a particular success. It became very difficult for individuals and small groups to compete, and it also became virtually impossible for an invidual reviewer and lister such as myself - without either a smartphone or an i-Pad - to keep up.

For this reason I have now removed the listings part of the site, and I am keeping it online simply as an archive of the articles and reviews I wrote from 2003 to about 2010, which may be of some interest to students and historians of the hyperliterature genre.

© The Hyperliterature Exchange