4 ms·

First 100% Crowdsourced Book (80 authors)

54 points by il 15y ago

neoveller 15y ago
How does this relate to HN or tech startups, you may wonder? This past Valentines Day, you might remember a post called "Neovella: Instantly co-author stories with your friends (or strangers)!" Neovella.com enables streamlined collaboration in writing short stories, through a turn-based "exquisite cadaver" method. The monetization scheme was to publish the best works from that mode of literary production, and take a 10% cut while redistributing the rest out to all the co-authors involved. This anthology is the result of that first experiment. Every story (17 included) was written turn-by-turn, ranging from 2 to 10 authors. Compared to a paperback novel, this would total somewhere near 120 pages. As for the content--well, it's definitely a reflection of Internet culture. :)
- kirubakaran 15y ago
  Great work!
sbisker 15y ago
Not to take away from this work, but the title is wrong, or at least needs more specification. There's at least one book that was 100% crowdsourced before this: "Amazing But True Cat Stories"... http://bjoern.org/projects/catbook/ http://bjoern.org/projects/catbook/ All of the stories were written by users on Mechanical Turk, around 2008. The project got a lot of press and attention at the time, on O'Reilly, Boing Boing, and the like. The "author" also wrote a how-to on Instructables: http://www.instructables.com/id/Dont-Do-It-Yourself-Start-a-Book-Publishing-Empi/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Dont-Do-It-Yourself-Start-a-...
- neoveller 15y ago
  Are you sure you understand how this publication was "crowd-sourced"? Writers take turns contributing to a single plot/story--no one individual is writing anything cohesive on its own. The crowd-sourcing aspect is the fundamental production method.
- fearless 15y ago
  I think the difference here is that this book is crowdsourced on a more granular level, by sentence. So every sentence in a single story could have been written by a different author.
- tzumby 15y ago
  I found another site similar to that, they're trying to beat the Guinness Record for the book with the most authors: http://wabblegame.com http://wabblegame.com Still, http://neovella.com/ http://neovella.com/ is probably a way better one.
CountHackulus 15y ago
For those that are interested, this book was the work of many people on the SomethingAwful forums. There's a thread about it here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3411045 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=341... Note that these are pay forums. Interesting to know the story behind it though.
- neoveller 15y ago
  Mostly correct. Only about half came from SA members, who were my fastest-adopting and highest-trafficking demographic upon launch. Their sense of humor also turned out to be quite a leap of unfathomable. We're writing a new story right now, if anyone wants to watch. http://www.neovella.com/Reader.aspx?ID=836 http://www.neovella.com/Reader.aspx?ID=836
bitsm 15y ago
First, I love this kinda stuff, but this is not exactly the first. SMITH magazine published Six-Word Memoirs in Feb. 2008 and made the NYTimes Bestseller list. The book had almost 800 authors, each of whom received a copy. http://www.smithmag.net/sixwordbook/about/ http://www.smithmag.net/sixwordbook/about/
illumen 15y ago
wiki
rogerbraun 15y ago
http://www.amazon.com/Aftershocks-Stories-Japan-Earthquake-ebook/dp/B004VP3KHK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=A12MGAGPLUJEQK&s=digital-text&qid=1305025597&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Aftershocks-Stories-Japan-Earthquake-e... This was a bit earlier.

54 points by il 15y ago

How does this relate to HN or tech startups, you may wonder? This past Valentines Day, you might remember a post called "Neovella: Instantly co-author stories with your friends (or strangers)!" Neovella.com enables streamlined collaboration in writing short stories, through a turn-based "exquisite cadaver" method. The monetization scheme was to publish the best works from that mode of literary production, and take a 10% cut while redistributing the rest out to all the co-authors involved. This anthology is the result of that first experiment. Every story (17 included) was written turn-by-turn, ranging from 2 to 10 authors. Compared to a paperback novel, this would total somewhere near 120 pages. As for the content--well, it's definitely a reflection of Internet culture. :)

kirubakaran 15y ago
Great work!

sbisker 15y ago

Not to take away from this work, but the title is wrong, or at least needs more specification. There's at least one book that was 100% crowdsourced before this: "Amazing But True Cat Stories"... http://bjoern.org/projects/catbook/ http://bjoern.org/projects/catbook/ All of the stories were written by users on Mechanical Turk, around 2008. The project got a lot of press and attention at the time, on O'Reilly, Boing Boing, and the like. The "author" also wrote a how-to on Instructables: http://www.instructables.com/id/Dont-Do-It-Yourself-Start-a-Book-Publishing-Empi/ http://www.instructables.com/id/Dont-Do-It-Yourself-Start-a-...

neoveller 15y ago
Are you sure you understand how this publication was "crowd-sourced"? Writers take turns contributing to a single plot/story--no one individual is writing anything cohesive on its own. The crowd-sourcing aspect is the fundamental production method.
fearless 15y ago
I think the difference here is that this book is crowdsourced on a more granular level, by sentence. So every sentence in a single story could have been written by a different author.
tzumby 15y ago
I found another site similar to that, they're trying to beat the Guinness Record for the book with the most authors: http://wabblegame.com http://wabblegame.com Still, http://neovella.com/ http://neovella.com/ is probably a way better one.

CountHackulus 15y ago

For those that are interested, this book was the work of many people on the SomethingAwful forums. There's a thread about it here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3411045 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=341... Note that these are pay forums. Interesting to know the story behind it though.

neoveller 15y ago
Mostly correct. Only about half came from SA members, who were my fastest-adopting and highest-trafficking demographic upon launch. Their sense of humor also turned out to be quite a leap of unfathomable. We're writing a new story right now, if anyone wants to watch. http://www.neovella.com/Reader.aspx?ID=836 http://www.neovella.com/Reader.aspx?ID=836

bitsm 15y ago

First, I love this kinda stuff, but this is not exactly the first. SMITH magazine published Six-Word Memoirs in Feb. 2008 and made the NYTimes Bestseller list. The book had almost 800 authors, each of whom received a copy. http://www.smithmag.net/sixwordbook/about/ http://www.smithmag.net/sixwordbook/about/

illumen 15y ago

wiki

rogerbraun 15y ago

http://www.amazon.com/Aftershocks-Stories-Japan-Earthquake-ebook/dp/B004VP3KHK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=A12MGAGPLUJEQK&s=digital-text&qid=1305025597&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Aftershocks-Stories-Japan-Earthquake-e... This was a bit earlier.