The Atavist

My first question was what is an atavist? So I looked it up. Merriam-Webster defines atavism as:

recurrence of or reversion to a past style, manner, outlook, approach, or activity.

So with that in mind, I poked around the site a bit to see what they're all about. It became apparent pretty quickly that the name is a reference to the group's goal of bringing good, engaging, well-researched nonfiction narrative back en vogue. It seemed a bit like Byliner, if Byliner only published its Originals series and didn't link to other works. As such, there are way fewer titles available on the Atavist, but I think that might be a solid business decision - if you're not linking people to free articles, they're more likely to buy the ones you're selling, right?

Speaking of buying, The Atavist makes it short and simple - all links are right there on each piece's profile page. I like that they've made an effort to offer their product in a variety of formats (even though it's one fewer than Byliner). It's an obvious and simple way to distribute their stories as widely as possible (in terms of digital distribution). Personally, I think it's important to not let media distribution become too centralized if your aim is to preserve the freest and easiest possible dissemination of information.

So, it bothered me that I miss out on the extra multimedia features just because I don't own an iDevice. I understand the constraints on a small outfit like this one, and I'm sure their development budget isn't huge. But it just seems like a mistake to only let the Apple crowd into to multimedia party, especially considering that they brag out its benefits on their about page:

That allows us to do some things we couldn’t otherwise—within our own apps—like including a free audiobook version of every one, and allowing you to flip back and forth between text and audio while the story keeps your place. In addition to each story’s unique collection of video and other media, inside the Atavist apps they have what we call inline content: maps, timelines, character lists, primary documents, and links. You can turn on the inline content to find out what’s behind the story, or leave it off to read completely distraction-free.

I'm not trying to say that the writing can't stand on its own. I'm in the middle of My Mother's Lover and it's excellent, but I keep wishing that I too could have access to the video of a pilot from Zahrt's Air Force squadron, as well as to the audiobook version. Couldn't they host it online behind a wall, and email an access code to Kindle and other ebook buyers? (For the the extra buck, of course.)

I didn't mean to whine. It just seems like if you're trying to herald in a digital publishing renaissance, it'd be wise to not restrict it by distribution platform.