Zory: Turning Bestselling Romance Novels into Interactive Experiences

Bridging Two Worlds: Traditional Publishing Meets Interactive Media

The digital reading landscape was fracturing. On one side, traditional ebook platforms offered quality literature but zero interactivity. On the other, interactive fiction apps attracted millions of users but relied on user-generated content that rarely met publishing standards. We identified a significant gap: readers wanted agency in their stories without sacrificing narrative quality.

Our initial research revealed compelling user needs. When we surveyed romance reading communities, 91% expressed interest in interactive versions of professional, novel-length books. This overwhelming response signaled an underserved market where digital natives craved more agency in their reading experiences—a fundamental shift in how modern audiences expect to engage with stories.

Key Design Challenges

Understanding Our Users

We identified two distinct user groups whose needs had to be simultaneously addressed:

To bring the project to market, we'd need to design an ecosystem that served both groups. Every interface decision would ripple through content creation, user experience, and business sustainability.

Validating a Hypothesis Through Multi-Method Research

We validated our hypothesis through quantitative analysis, community surveys, competitive mapping, and industry trends. Our goal was to prove that readers wanted professionally written, interactive fiction.

The data confirmed what we'd observed in both communities. Both audiences were predominantly female, and romance readers were getting younger while interactive fiction users were aging up. This convergence revealed our sweet spot: women in their 20s and 30s who grew up fluent in both books and games.

Community Validation

To validate demand, we went directly to established online communities, surveying 388 engaged users. This guerrilla research approach let us quickly test whether our crossover audience actually existed and what they wanted.

Both communities showed strong interest in a product that didn't yet exist. Romance readers were excited about the possibilities of introducing agency in their stories, while interactive fiction users craved higher quality content. This crossover demand validated our core hypothesis.

Competitive Landscape Analysis

We mapped the existing market to understand why user needs weren't being met:

Key Insights That Shaped Our Design

This research validated our hypothesis and uncovered the design principles that would guide every decision we made. We were pioneering a new category at the intersection of literature and interactivity—one that demanded we reimagine the conventions of both industries.

More Than a Designer

As Co-founder and Head of Product & Design at Zory, I built the company from scratch alongside the creators of Crossy Road. Beyond traditional design work, I owned the complete product journey. This allowed me to trace every design decision through its full lifecycle, from concept to code to customer impact.

I led design for the complete mobile experience, from information architecture to micro-interactions. Working closely with my technical co-founder, Matt Hall, I helped architect a system that empowered 18 bestselling authors to create interactive stories without code and without ever leaving their manuscript document. My focus was making complex authoring feel intuitive.

Learning from Industry Veterans

Building Zory alongside industry veterans who'd collectively shipped products to hundreds of millions of users shaped how I approach design. Our team brought together expertise from mobile gaming and traditional publishing—each domain with its own patterns, constraints, and user expectations.

My days mixed creative sessions with RITA-nominated authors, technical discussions with mobile gaming veterans, and strategy meetings with experienced operators. Clara Reeves, CEO of Hipster Whale (Crossy Road), advised us on platform features and business models. Working across these different groups taught me to bridge perspectives and communicate ideas clearly between creative and technical teams.

Working with this caliber of team fundamentally raised my standards. Matt Hall's experience creating one of the most downloaded mobile games in history meant we thought about scale and performance from day one. Our editorial director's 35 years in publishing brought nuance to every content decision. These partnerships taught me to match the communication style and technical depth needed for each stakeholder, whether collaborating with emerging talent or industry pioneers.

1. Choice Architecture: Designing Seamless Interactive Moments

Interactive fiction typically treats choices as interruptions—modal dialogs that break narrative flow. At Zory, we explored whether choices could feel like natural extensions of the reading experience itself.

We decide choices would always appear at the bottom of the reader page, creating predictable placement. When content demanded more room, choices would flow to the next page but maintain that bottom position.

The button interaction used a 2D raised aesthetic with press animations that made the button appear to sink into the page. Haptic feedback reinforced the interaction. Upon selection, the chosen text animated from the button into its position as the next line of narrative, while unchosen options faded away.

The integrated choice text was styled slightly lighter than surrounding narrative and was centered—a subtle acknowledgment of reader agency without disrupting flow. A staggered reveal animation unveiled the continuation, creating a sense of the story responding to reader input.

Premium choices used the same interaction system with added sparkle animations created in Rive. This maintained consistency while adding visual value to paid options.

Qualitative feedback consistently highlighted the seamless integration of choices. Beta testers described feeling "inside" the narrative and reported that choices felt like "part of the story" rather than interruptions. This integration appeared to contribute to user retention during early reading sessions.

2. The Five-Tab Architecture: Designing for Readers, Not Gamers

Early in our design process, we considered game-like features—quests, achievements, energy systems—but ultimately rejected them in favor of simplicity. We wanted the clean, focused experience of a Kindle app with the added excitement of choice.

Research showed romance readers think in terms of "my books" (library), "finding new books" (bookstore), and basic account needs. This informed our five-tab architecture that streamlined readers into books as efficiently as possible, using familiar metaphors instead of gaming conventions.

The five-tab structure resulted in 3.6 engaged sessions per active user, 32-minute average session times, and a 2.6% purchase conversion rate. User feedback consistently noted the app was easy and pleasant to navigate.

3. Editor's Notes: Scaffolding Reader Understanding

After soft-launching, we discovered readers faced a cognitive gap between making choices and experiencing their consequences. A choice in chapter 8 might fundamentally alter the story, but its impact wouldn't become apparent until chapter 15. This disconnect caused confusion and contributed to reader drop-off.

Our solution was Editor's Notes—contextual messages that appeared before and after key choices. These served multiple purposes: onboarding new readers into how interactivity worked, celebrating monetized choices with positive reinforcement, and most importantly, letting readers know their choices would have significant consequences down the line.

We implemented this feature delicately. We needed to provide just enough information to maintain reader confidence without spoiling future plot points. Notes like "This choice will significantly impact your relationship with this character" gave readers the assurance that their decisions mattered, even when the immediate narrative seemed to continue unchanged.

Beta testers in our Discord reported that Editor's Notes improved their understanding of the interactive format and increased confidence in their choices. Several readers noted that knowing their choices would have later consequences maintained engagement through transitional chapters.

4. Zory Writer: Creating a Design Language for Interactive Authoring

Enabling non-technical authors to create interactive narratives required bridging two different mental models. Existing tools were built by programmers using terms like nodes, branches, and conditional logic. Romance authors thought in scenes, metaphors, and emotional beats.

Initial explorations focused on how authors naturally think about story variations. Before collaborating with CTO Matt Hall (creator of Crossy Road), I developed concepts using simple highlights and parenthetical tags that could work in any word processor. This became the foundation for our authoring system.

The key insight was reframing the vocabulary. Traditional interactive fiction used "branches"—implying permanent divergence. We introduced Vines: story paths that could weave apart and come back together. This metaphor shift changed how authors approached their stories. Rather than exponentially complex branch diagrams, they were weaving controlled variations.

The complete framework included 13 author-friendly concepts, four key ones being:

Each term was carefully chosen to resonate with writers' existing mental models. While Matt Hall brilliantly engineered the ZRY markup engine that powered everything, I focused on making it feel natural in Google Docs—the tool authors already used daily.

The Google Docs add-on interface maintained simplicity. Despite our system being simpler than traditional tools, any friction could interrupt creative flow. The add-on provided one-click insertion of pre-formatted choice blocks with placeholder text, allowing authors to focus on storytelling rather than syntax.

Zory Writer Google Docs Add-on Interface

The add-on provided one-click insertion of formatted choice tables and intuitive controls for authors

Authors who had been intimidated by traditional interactive fiction tools were creating complex narratives within days.

By the time we sunset, dozens of professional authors and in-house writers had successfully used the system. The comprehensive documentation became the foundation for author onboarding, and the conceptual framework influenced how the entire team discussed interactive storytelling.

While Zory ultimately sunset due to content velocity challenges, we achieved significant validation during our 18-month run. The metrics below represent lifetime performance across 14,000+ downloads.

User Behavior Patterns

Following our April 2024 global launch, user engagement patterns remained consistently strong. The 61% direct traffic rate indicated substantial word-of-mouth sharing, while our 4.16% App Store conversion rate exceeded the entertainment category average of 3.2%.

Users who downloaded the app averaged 3.6 sessions per week with session lengths of 32 minutes—substantially higher than the 1.0-1.5 sessions typical for entertainment apps. This engagement pattern persisted throughout the product lifetime, with 37% of users returning weekly.

Platform Impact

Author Adoption: Bestselling authors successfully created interactive stories using the Zory Writer system. The Google Docs-based workflow and conceptual framework (Vines, Leaves, Skipping Stones) enabled authors with no technical background to create branching narratives within days of onboarding.

Monetization Performance: Premium choices converted at 2.6%, with Android users spending $13.28 on average compared to $7.01 for iOS users. This inverse of typical platform patterns (where iOS usually generates 60% higher revenue) suggested different user demographics or expectations between platforms.

Engagement Patterns: Users averaged 7.55 sessions per device over the product lifetime, with 37% returning weekly. The combination of high session duration (32m 48s) and multiple return visits indicated strong product-market fit among our user base, though content production limitations prevented broader scale.

Zory was an ambitious attempt to democratize interactive storytelling. As a bootstrapped team with one primary engineer, we built a platform that enabled bestselling authors to create branching narratives without technical knowledge. While content velocity and monetization challenges ultimately led to our sunset, the journey provided invaluable insights about product design, platform dynamics, and the realities of bootstrapping.

What the Data Revealed

Users spent an average of 32 minutes and 48 seconds per session—higher than typical reading apps like Wattpad (28 minutes) and approaching video streaming engagement. The 61% direct traffic and 3.6 sessions per user indicated strong product-market fit among our user base. Interestingly, Android users spent $13.28 on average versus $7.01 for iOS users, inverting typical platform monetization patterns.

These metrics validated our core assumptions about reader appetite for quality interactive fiction. However, with only a small pool of paying users across all platforms and no ad revenue implementation, our free-to-play model couldn't sustain the business despite strong engagement.

Systems That Worked

The Zory Writer system successfully onboarded signed and hired professional authors who had never created interactive content. By building within Google Docs and creating an intuitive conceptual framework (Vines, Leaves, Skipping Stones), we reduced the barrier to entry significantly. Authors were publishing complex narratives within days of starting.

Our choice architecture—seamlessly integrated into the reading flow rather than modal interruptions—maintained narrative immersion. The five-tab navigation respected reader mental models, avoiding game-like conventions that might alienate our target audience. Our key-based monetization with free chapters effectively hooked readers before asking for payment.

The Content Velocity Problem

With 12,000+ users and only 18 authors, we faced a fundamental supply-demand mismatch. Our free-to-play model, with keys regenerating every 8 hours (if below quantity thresholds), encouraged binge reading that our premium author base couldn't satisfy. Unlike platforms with user-generated content or AI-assisted creation, our focus on professional quality stories limited production speed.

This constraint became clear as session times declined from 32 minutes to 15 minutes—users had simply exhausted our content library. With limited resources, we faced a dilemma: building content management tools and creator incentive systems would accelerate production, but shifting to a user-generated content model would betray our core promise. We had positioned ourselves as a publisher of premium fiction, not another platform for amateur writers. The very quality standard that attracted our users also limited our ability to scale.