Google Maps flybys for your novels
Wouldn’t it be cool if your novels let readers go to a Google Earth / Maps flyby for all the major locations in your book?
That’s what I did for some of my novels, and many readers try it after reading the books.
First, some context.
My books are in the Ancient Historical Fiction genre, and each story mixes known history (locations, characters, incidents) with a fictional story.
When I write the novel, I spend considerable time “flying” over those locations, imagining my scenes, plotting distances, observing terrains and so on. Likewise, I love to go to locations mentioned in the books I read, to get a better sense of place and situation.
What I did
For some of my books, I recently created a Google Earth flyby. It’s pretty simple — go to https://earth.web.com and create a project, add the locations with notes, create separator slides — it’s quite easy. You can then share a link to it for public access.
When readers finish a novel, I give them a link to go to the maps, from where they can launch a presentation that takes them to each location, in chronological order (of the book), along with some notes. It’s fun and informative.
Want to take a look?
Here are the maps for the Cleopatra — the Last Pharaoh series. Ideally, you’d do the flyby after reading the books (to avoid spoilers), but a quick flip can give you a sense of what it feels like.
I also created a flyby for a novel on the Lost Army of Cambyses, taking you to the locations in Egypt.
The flybys seem to work best on Google Chrome. I’ve observed some performance issues when on Safari.
If you haven’t tried this for your books, you should give it consideration. It’s quite simple and some of your readers will love it!
HTH
