From Boing Boing. I hate serials so I won't jump in, but I'll probably buy the thing when it's finished. The Mongoliad is live! This is the collaborative, participatory shared-world project from Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and pals. It's an epic fantasy novel about the Mongol conquest, told in installment form, with lots of supplementary material (video, stills, short fiction, etc), and a strong audience participation component in the form of a Wikipedia-style concordance, fanfic, etc. You can read the free samples without registration, but you need an account to edit the "Pedia." For $5.99 you get a six-month subscription to...

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Charles Dickens didn't invent serialized novels, but he's certainly one of the best known authors to use the serial approach. Whereas the traditional story has a beginning, a middle and an end, the serial novel is often characterized by the never-ending middle. The author starts the story, and then releases new installments over time. I wonder what Charles Dickens would think of serialized ebooks. The topic is on my mind today because when I woke up this morning and looked at the Smashwords home page, it was dominated by five installments of a single ebook, each about 10,000 words. The other day, I...

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