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McCall Smith serial Wins AOP Award

Innovation brings author of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency new success around the world.

Alexander McCall Smith's latest serial novel, Corduroy Mansions, published in daily installments on the Telegraph website, has won the prestigious Association of Online Publishers Digital Publishing Awards 09 - Cross Media Project. The winners were announced at an award ceremony in London's Old Billingsgate on 1st June.

Corduroy Mansions is set in London's Pimlico and features the hugely entertaining comings and goings of the residents of a mansion block. Written with his customary charm and unique mastery of the episodic form, global-bestseller Alexander McCall Smith brought readers of the Telegraph website an entertaining tale of real people, peppered with his familiar, hilarious wit. Published online in both print and audio formats, fans could choose to read an episode or listen to it as a podcast, , and the story found an immediate and appreciative audience around the globe.

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. 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!

Alexander McCall Smith on Corduroy Mansions: 'Corduroy Mansions is a newspaper serial novel which runs on the Daily Telegraph website. I started writing serial novels some years ago, following upon a meeting in San Francisco with Armistead Maupin, the author of Tales of the City.

It is important to distinguish between novels written in advance and then published in instalments, and those written for publication a few days or weeks later. Corduroy Mansions is a serial in that latter sense, as was my Edinburgh serial novel, 44 Scotland Street, which ran for five years in The Scotsman. I enjoyed writing it, but wanted a change. London beckoned. Pimlico struck me as being an interesting place. Corduroy Mansions was the result.

I am delighted that the innovation of the Telegraph media group has been recognised in this way. We have had great fun creating the serial across all platforms and I am very much looking forward to returning to the story in the autumn.'

A second series of Corduroy Mansions will appear on the Telegraph website in September 09. The first series will be published in hardback book form (Polygon), on audiobook (Hachette Digital) in July 2009 and in paperback (Abacus) in May 2010.