NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Radish, a short-form serialized fiction platform capitalizing on the shift to mobile reading, today announced the launch of Radish Originals, its first foray into producing in-house serialized stories. To oversee the initiative, Radish brought Sue Johnson on board as CCO and to head its New York office. Johnson formerly served as VP of Programming at ABC Daytime, where she oversaw the soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live, and most recently was at Pocket Gems mobile interactive storytelling app Episode.
“Radish is rapidly growing and our users are hungry for more diverse content. Sue’s experience in serialized storytelling for both the traditional and mobile entertainment space supports our mission to deliver a broad range of premium stories to our readers from not only up-and-coming authors, but well-established writers, which is where Sue’s expertise is invaluable. We will be producing stories in TV-style writers’ rooms and iterating these stories through data-driven A/B testing often used in mobile gaming studios. We are excited to innovate on how novels are produced and published,” said Seung-yoon “SY” Lee, Founder and CEO of Radish.
“Radish reflects the increase in mobile consumption, desire for shorter, bite-size content and consumer’s demand for premium storytelling, which makes it a very exciting time to be joining the team,” said Johnson. “Radish Originals will showcase powerful writing by masters of the episodic art form, including some of daytime television’s most accomplished writers.”
To launch Radish Originals, Johnson has brought together six of television’s most celebrated Emmy® Award-winning soap opera writers to help pen original stories for the platform, including Jean Passanante, Addie Walsh, Leah Laiman, Tom Casiello, Marlene McPherson and Lisa Connor. Between them, they have 11 Emmy wins, 50 Emmy nominations, 15 Writers Guild Awards and 42 Writers Guild nominations and have worked on every major American soap opera airing in the last 30 years, including All My Children, As the World Turns, Days of Our Lives, Guiding Light, Another World, One Life to Live, General Hospital, Passions, Loving, Search for Tomorrow, and The Young and the Restless.
Offering a range of genres that includes romance, fantasy, YA, paranormal and mystery, Radish Originals aim to highlight diversity and inclusion. Stories will feature a mix of leading characters who are diverse with regards to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age and physical abilities. The first Radish Originals became available in November.
The initial line-up of Radish Originals available now include (images available HERE):
- Fraternity Madam: When a college student desperate for money realizes the hot frat boys next door would be all too willing to fool around for cash, she becomes an overnight madam. But running an escort service comes with plenty of problems - not the least of which is her hunky next door neighbor.
- Vampire Prep: After her parents are killed under mysterious circumstances, a girl moves to the countryside to attend an exclusive boarding school – for vampires. As she begins to fall for one of her classmates she learns the dark secrets surrounding the school…and her family.
- Heart of Dragons: A young woman is taken to be sacrificed to the dragons that live beneath the kingdom of Tamaren and finds herself torn between her love for the knight who has sworn to rescue her and her growing attraction to the dragon prince.
- Paging Prince Charming: After her friend jokingly hires a professional “fairy godmother” for her birthday, a young woman wishes for a prince—and gets a time-traveling royal dropped into her modern life
- Lies I Tell my Sister: Two 20-something sisters have an unbreakable bond—until the younger, married sister begins an affair with her older sister’s new fiancé.
- Blood Brothel: Fleeing a traumatic past, a woman is offered a glamorous new job working for an illicit vampire escort service. Torn between her seductive boss and a bad boy escort she’s a pawn in a dangerous game between rival vampire factions.
Radish is available on the iOS and Android platforms.
About Radish (www.radishfiction.com)
Headquartered in New York with additional offices in Seoul, Radish is a mobile serialized fiction app. Radish features over 1000 authors working in romance, fantasy, YA, paranormal, mystery, LGBTQ+, horror, new adult and sci fi and has already reached close to a million app downloads since its launch in February 2016. Offering a literary version of a television series where the reader is hooked on getting the next episode when left with a cliffhanger ending, Radish allows users to test out a story by reading several free episodes and then making a micropayment to access each additional episode.
Investors include Greylock, Lowercase Capital, Softbank Next Media Innovation Fund, UTA, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investment (BDMI), Sherpa and individuals including Amy Tan, Peter Bazalgette, Charlie Songhurst, Nicolas Berggruen, Matt Humphrey, Duncan Clark, and Jeremy Yap, among others.