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Alexander McCall Smith serial Wins second media Award

Corduroy Mansions scoops New Media Age prize

Alexander McCall Smith
Corduroy Mansions

Corduroy Mansions

Alexander McCall Smith Read by Andrew Sachs

Audiobook (CD): £15.99

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In March 2009, Corduroy Mansions, the first series of an online serial novel by one of the world's favourite authors, Alexander McCall Smith, came to an end on the Telegraph Media Group website, leaving readers and listeners around the globe distraught.

Three months later the serial (about to be published on audio by Little, Brown and in hardback by Polygon) has won a second major award. The New Media Age Awards 2009 – 'the greatest prize in new media', were announced at a dinner last night, 25 June and the Telegraph Group scooped the Media Award. Earlier this month the project took the prestigious Association of Online Publishers Digital Publishing Award 2009 for a Cross Media Project.

The New Media Age Awards (NMA) aim to demonstrate and promote the quality of new media usage in the UK; to provide a benchmark of excellence from which the industry can learn and from which it can build; to show the importance of usability and accessibility in building an effective online presence; and to demonstrate the power of digital media to the wider business world.

Corduroy Mansions uniquely brings together traditional and state-of-the-art technologies in a truly cross media project. UK publishing houses Little, Brown and Polygon have worked closely with the digital and print teams at the Telegraph to bring McCall Smith's daily episodes to the internet - on screen, as daily audio downloads, as podcasts and soon as audiobook, ebook and traditional hardback printed book.

Alexander has interacted with his readers, taking their suggestions into account as he wrote, recording video and audio messages and is soon to do live events to talk about the creation of such a challenging novel. In September of this year, Corduroy Mansions will recommence on the Telegraph media site and for the first time, it will also appear once a week in the printed paper, as well as a simultaneous podcast edition read by Andrew Sachs.

For publishers Little, Brown and Polygon the project involved close working relationships with the team from the Telegraph while recording the audio episodes created its own challenges.

Little, Brown editors worked with Alexander to incredibly tight deadlines in order to allow actor Andrew Sachs to record the material a few episodes at a time. This was the first time that a writer, two publishers and a newspaper media group had engaged on such an ambitious project across print, electronic and audio media – and it worked!

Story by Little, Brown's Bobby Nayyar