Penguin claims to be the first major publishing house to use a wiki for writing a novel from scratch. A Million Penguins went live Thursday; using wiki software it can be written, edited or read by anyone.  It’s not quite from scratch, though: it’s being seeded by a team of students; a Penguin editor will write progress reports. The novel went live on Thursday and its first lines are already in play for anyone who cares to participate. It began with these words: “It had snowed, and was now raining. Gritty slush covered the pavement. Sharp crystals of snow decorated grass.” Not quite “Call me Ishmael,” but it’s a start. By the third paragraph, the criticism already starts (“He looked down at Liz and Dean. (I am lost here - who is Liz and Dean).”
As Reuters notes, Penguin is trying the wiki novel as a test of whether a group of disparate and diverse people can create a “believable fictional voice.” It will be online for six weeks and so far, there are no plans to publish the tale, which so far involves a man walking his dog and a seductive murderer “known as the Tango poisoner.” Penguin UK digital publisher Jeremy Ettinghausen blogs about it here.
Related:
—Penguin Books, Remixed