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WEbook ‘makes writing a little less lonely,’ says upbeat W. Post article
April 14, 2008 | 8:47 am
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By David Rothman
WEbook, a wiki-novel site and more, is the topic of Kim Hart’s upbeat piece in the Washington Post—congrats, WE! Turns out that the company is just a quick drive away from me in suburban Maryland, across the river from Virginia.
Interesting detail: “In addition to attracting writers, WEbook hopes to tap into the expertise of people with detailed knowledge of more esoteric fields,” Hart says. Acording to her, WE President Sue Heilbronner “hopes experts in law or espionage, for example, could lend their know-how to make a legal thriller more authoritative.”
I remain partial to an old-fashioned novel in one person’s voice, ideally a smart and grumpy voice or something just plain quirky; but this is a taste thing. In fairness to WEbook, so many best-sellers are written today in an impersonal way that maybe the wiki kind will find more of an audience than skeptics think. The key will be to draw in the right experts and do lots of editing.
A classic previrtual collaboration: Naked Came the Stranger, written in 1969 by 24 Newsday reporters eager to see what dreck publishers and readers would buy. Would you believe, it’s still on sale at Amazon as a new book and has drawn a four-star average rating from peole despite hip to the joke. Nice comment on the publishing industry!
Image: A group-written novel from WEbooks—available as a P book, not just in E.
Related: Earlier TeleBlog item on WEbooks.
Technorati Tags: WEbooks,Sue Heilbronner
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Comments:
a totally fascinating idea. I wish the project all success.
They seem overly optimistic about the ability to receive contributors to projects. Writers don’t collaborate as much as you might think, except in certain cases.
Also, it seems focused more on the editorial process than the end result. Who really cares about what the editor thinks about a certain page (except the author seeking feedback)?
I don’t know if I should be trying to read these stories for pleasure or give them editorial feedback.
Desdemona’s Fishtank is another website that does essentially the same thing for erotic stories, except that it keeps the original manuscripts inside a private forum. Zoetrope and Backspace do essentially the same thing.
And what’s with this social networking stuff? Who cares really?
The web project would probably succeed most in attracting contributors of an anthology-oriented project. I would be curious to see what collections come out of this project. If the publisher promotes a title heavily enough to attract sales, other projects will come to it.
The most important page is their terms of service . Basically WeBook has an exclusive right to publish for a certain time period, and if it refuses, then you can take it off the site.
Frankly, this contract/terms of service is fascinating/convoluted/maddening. I see they are trying to be fair (with creative commons works, with anthologies and with 75% royalties to Single Author works). But the terms of service are extremely complicated, and I would have to hire a lawyer just to interpret this thing.
I’m trying to put together an anthology, but the terms of service are too complicated for me to feel comfortable with.
(Curiously, there is no mention about whether sexually-oriented material is accepted there).
Naked Came the Stranger…has always been one of my favorite literary hoaxes. From the Museum of Hoaxes description of the book:
Aging midlist authors should seriously consider hiring young actors to pose for publicity shots. I guess with ebooks, the book jacket pictures don’t matter that much.
Hey, I’m an intern for WEbook this summer, and have a few responses to questions/comments posed by Hapax and the original article.
re: the article
WEbook’s goal is to produce books, but certainly not all of them are going to be collaborative. The site gives users the option to be the sole author of their text or share that job with the community. Moreover most of the collaborative projects on the site right now are anthologies, not group-novels.
re: hapax
It seems to me, as a writer, that the best writing comes from rewriting. So I personally like getting lots of feedback. Since the site is by writers for writers, generally speaking, I think most of the stories are meant to be read so you can give editorial feedback. That’s what I’d want on my pieces, anyway.
Social networking is convient here because it allows you to interact with and get to know writers who live states or sometimes even continents away. Which is pretty neat.
I believe the terms of service have been revised since April. Not positive on that, though.
Sexually-oriented material is welcome on the site, though we ask users keep the title and “cover image” (which appear publicly across the site) relativley appropriate.
Thanks for the encouragement, and I invite you to come check out the site again. It’s still a changing, growing place, but I believe it’s come a long way since the spring.