What the Frilly Hell Are You On About?

Alright, it is apparent that the only people looking at this blog are those is my Social Media Marketing class (mostly since I haven't really told anyone else about it). My guess is that none of you are in the Literary Inspired Webseries community, and have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. So let's just take it from the beginning, shall we?

Once upon a time, Hank Green and Bernie Su created the masterpiece that is The Lizzie Bennett Diaries. It was an adaption of Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth Bennett, the headstrong girl with four sisters, became Lizzie, the sarcastic Mass Communications grad student living at home with her parents and two sisters. She and her best friend, Charlotte Lu (adapted from Charlotte Lucas), start a vlog.

Lizzie took the internet by storm. The first episode has over 2.3 million views. Fans were truly invested in the lives of the characters. The wait for Darcy Day (the day where William Darcy- adapted from Fitzwilliam Darcy- would finally show his face on camera) was agonizing.

Just a month before The Lizzie Bennett Diaries aired it's last episode, The Autobiography of Jane Eyre released it's first. Jane became a recently graduated nursing student who decided she would rather be a live-in tutor. Fans had a collective realization. We could do this too. Fans became the creators. Since then, dozens of adaptions have sprung up. Most follow the vlog-style format, but some deviate. Some imagine authors, rather than characters, into the modern world.

I have followed the vast majority of these shows. 10 months ago, I started making monthly calendars of what is being uploaded when. Here's the February calendar, for example:

All but two of these shows adapt literature in some way. There are also another three adaptions that don't upload regularly. As you can see, there's quite a saturated market for such a niche target.

I believe that this platform has unbelievable potential. Right now, the only stories that are getting adapted are those in the public domain. That way, no one gets sued.

Can you imagine if publishing houses did a later push of some of their more classic stories before they became public domain, using this tactic? They would have exclusive rights to the story, which means that no one else could adapt it. If it was done well, fans would not only eat up the show, but they'd want to go back and read the book that inspired it too. This platform breathes new life into works that many in our generation see as old and inaccessible.

That's why this is so important to me. This phenomena has made the old new again, and I can't wait to see where it takes us.