We’ve Never Done It That Way, But Would You Read It?
We Are Smarter Than Me is a new effort to publish a book that is collaboratively written by thousands of volunteers. The topic they are focusing on is how collaborative efforts can impact traditional top-down corporate activities.
A few books have recently been written on this topic, but they all fail to confront one central paradox. While they extol the power of communities, they were each written by only one person. We’re putting this paradox to the test by inviting hundreds of thousands of authors to contribute to this “network book” using today’s technologies.
This approach takes the idea of beta publishing to the extreme end of the continuum of participation. Beta publishing leverages a book’s audience to improve the quality of the book. However, there is still a single author whose vision and voice is embodied in the work. I honestly have my doubts about how well this concept will work when extended to authoring as well. It will require strong editing skills to hold together as a coherent book.
What do you think? Is this an interesting one-off experiment or the new wave of publishing?
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