During this month’s search I found a website that piqued my curiosity, WEbook.
The first thing I noticed on their homepage was the bold but simple graphics and color scheme, both easy on the eye. The second was 3 large boxes to click on: Writers, Readers and Feedbackers. That grabbed my attention.
I read their about page for more information. They describe themselves as a revolutionary online book publishing company. They figured that most writers were sick of trying to get published the traditional way and that the talent of millions of writers was being wasted. Their groundbreaking concept: User-Generated Books.
WEbook is a community of writers, editors, readers, reviewers and illustrators who combine forces to create user-driven fiction and non-fiction. Finally, some of the power is taken away from the publishing heirarchy and given to the passionate people whose efforts keep the book industry alive.
I have seen this in a rudimentary form on book forums and Twitter where members take turns at writing sentences or paragraphs that create entire stories. I even practiced it once in school as a child. WEbook takes this basic principle and opens it up to a range of new possibilities.
This is the next generation of publishing. It is a trend that should reach far into the future as the digital age engulfs the entire world. The goals of WEbook are cohesive with ours at Perpetual Prose. We are happy to support them.
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28/04/2009 at 11:19 pm Permalink
Just peeked around at the WEbook site and thought it quite impressive. I’ll go back there soon and spend more time.
Thanks for sharing this one.
01/05/2009 at 9:37 pm Permalink
It’s a great idea.
However, I’ve had material there for well over a year and have had very few comments. Not even the “This is an interesting idea, but it needs work” variety.
There seems to be a flaw of sorts with the system.
02/05/2009 at 12:32 am Permalink
I had already written a book and was in the publishing process when I discovered WEbook. Even though it was too late to publish anything through them directly, I kept getting involved in some joint efforts, most notably, a collaboration of writers coming up with simple, “ten word stories”. It was fun, trying to make some sort of statement in exactly ten words, but I submitted 20 or so, some good; some not so good.
Apparently, this thing’s going to be actually be published, so that’s very cool. One unfortunate side effect; my inability to extend past ten! But I’m working on it, as best as possible.