Group-written books and others from WEbook: P-editions of highest-rated titles
“Claiming to be a sort of open source approach to authoring literature, WEbook is a forum where new books can be composed by an individual wishing to “sandbox” his work, or by communities who submit content on a given subject which can then be voted into a book. The site’s founders say they hope it does for publishing what Linux did for software and Wikipedia did for information.” - BetaNews.
Details: The highest-rated books can become paper books, e-book files and audiobooks. Thirty-four people wrote or otherwise contributed to the “community-sourced” Pandora, the first book published by WE, and will share royalties from sales at its site, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Pandora’s plot: “On the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a man and a woman, each harboring a secret of global consequence, have fallen in love.
“Pandora is an exotic beauty who teaches yoga, and Chris is a Columbia grad student from Louisiana who is immersed in political science. Cross-cultural love is tough enough, but when New York City is again attacked by terrorists, the couple’s East-West love affair threatens to put the entire United States in danger.”
The obvious question: Can group-written novels work? How tightly edited was this one? Did the editing reach the point where this wasn’t so much a true community-style collaboration? I don’t know.
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