Digital Detective Mysteries
Dare to Dream
Book one in the series
The Digital Detectives Mysteries was hands-down one of the coolest business ventures I have been involved in to-date. This company was co-founded by me and my best college buddy, Brett Cohen. During our college days, we had built CollegeFriends.com and then, after some time off, we joined forces again to create this super innovative concept of traditional media merged with new media.
Market Opportunity
The Digital Detectives Mysteries was created because of two emerging trends that we saw on the horizon. First and foremost, we saw the rapid mainstream adoption of Macromedia’s Flash engine.
Book two in the series
Secondly, we saw an opportunity in the children’s book market for a hot new books series. As kids, we had been captivated with the choose-your-own-adventure book series. We decided to create an interactive version of that series wherein real-world physical books would have interactive portions in the online world.
BD, BD, BD
Against all odds, we struck an amazing distrubtion deal, achieved nation distribution as well as overseas distribution and saw one of the largest first print runs for any children’s book up to that time (well, at least until Harry Potter came along).
Rapid Growth
Our single book, developed into an entire series. We built an amazing team, had a great time and achieved national recognition for this innovative book series. We got kick-ass media coverage and became a standard book in grade school curriculums where teachers were seeing a decline in reading as children were becoming more enamored with online games. The Digital Detectives Mysteries solved this issue because it delivered the best of both worlds.
Book three in the series
Above is a compiled demo of the product
Press
Chicago Sun Times - Book Expo Write up
Recogintion
Digital Detectives was such a huge hit that we had a chance to be interviewed live on CNNfn regarding our Enhanced Book technology platform.
We also received the Ben Franklin Technology Award for Most Innovative Product of the Year 2001
We were also given a guest appearance in a book called Spare Room Tycoon. Link here:
