Crowdsourcing: The Future for Books?

By • May 22nd, 2009 • Category: 26th Story, Book News and Publishing

crowdsourcing_process2Somewhat to our surpise the mainstream media is still buzzing about the blog-to-book phenomenon. The next chapter in the crowdsourcing adventure is a project from Perseus which came up with the cool idea of publishing a book made up entirely of the first lines from sequels our favorite authors never wrote (examples on the book’s website include Tolstoy and Orwell). They’re calling the project Book: The Sequel and anyone can submit their one-liner for consideration. Like something you might have done in high school English to jog your literary memory, the book is a fun and quirky exercise in group brainstorming.

So is crowdsouring a viable future for books?

I wonder what Virginia Woolf  would think of this first line: Mrs. Robinson said she would buy the stockings herself.

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  • http://www.fictionmatters.com Bradley Robb

    As much as many of us (myself included) like to talk about the democratization of the publishing industry, there is a large realization that without a single guiding hand, a decider with a clear idea of what the finished act will (not should) look like, books will be largely unusable. Only so much of a book can be crowdsourced, and if you open too many things up, the signal to noise ratio will overwhelm the editor.

    With projects like this, however, it’s hard to think about how an editor would be able to accumulate that much content without sourcing it out as widely as possible. I guess that makes the real question whether, in the future, more books will cast wide shallow nets. Is that something that worthy of a publisher’s time or is it something that could be more easily archived and curated in web format?

  • http://halfdesertedstreets.com Lauren

    I think crowdsourcing works well, but shouldn’t necessarily be the entire future for books. I think for collections such as “Book: the Sequel,” or even the Six Word Memoir books, it’s a terrific option. It let’s outsiders have their chance to be published and gives editors a slew of ideas to pick from. And as much as I do enjoy those types of books, I think it should stay as a smaller subculture of publishing and not necessarily dominate it. Because, really, I don’t really want 200 people writing a future Harry Potter book or something.

    As a side note, “Book: the Sequel” is an idea I really wish I had when teaching.

  • http://theharperstudio.com Katie

    Both of your comments bring up really good questions. Crowdsourcing seems to have a time and place when it comes to books. No one wants too many cooks in the kitchen. But I’m interested to see what other clever ways people will come up with to harness the power of crowdsourcing.

  • Trace Eber

    This is a pretty cool idea. There’s also a similar thing going on with the Twitter Novel project (http://www.twitter.com/Tweet_book). Interesting time for books.

  • http://interdome.blogspot.com Adam

    Hey, I like reading the writing on the inside of the bathroom stall as much as anyone. But there’s a reason it’s written there.

    There’s also a reason I don’t carry the bathroom stall door around with me for pleasure reading.

    File this idea under, “nobody reads twitter for more than ten minutes at a time”, or, “everything I need to know I learned from T-shirts, coffee mugs, and page-a-day calendars”.

    cheers,
    Adam

    ps. these blog comments are currently under negotiations for a book deal.