Earlier, Borders Australia and Random House held a contest to find twenty-eight writers who would be able to write the bulk of the book. The chapters they produce will need to be less than 750 words so, obviously, this book will be a little lighter than Patterson's other novels.

Once complete, Airborne will be released electronically, one chapter at a time, starting on March 20th. Later, a print edition will be published, but only as a prize of sorts for the participants in the competition - it will not be mass produced.

Collaborative Writing is So Very Web 2.0

The roots of the collaborative writing movement can be found in many web startups, including those like Novlet, Potrayl, Ficlets, Unblokt, Protagonize, and others we profiled here. A popular activity for creative writers, these communities offer various takes on how a co-written story should be developed, some focused more on "choose your own adventure"-style stories while others focus more on linear narratives.

Although the James Patterson novel is more of a marketing campaign than anything else - and, in this case, the "crowd" is actually a hand-picked selection of aspiring writers - it's still interesting to see such a widely-read writer embracing the co-writing trend. While those passionate about the subject may say this particular effort doesn't qualify since it isn't truly written by "the crowd," it's events like this that take the general idea behind the trend and cross it over to where it can make a mark on the minds of the mainstream.

What remains to be seen at this point is whether a crowdsourced, co-written novel can actually be any good.

Those interested in following the progress of AirBorne can do so on Facebook, Twitter, and via RSS.

Some of the novels tweeted so far have been interesting and engaging, but others, sadly, appear to be abandoned. Will micro-format fiction ever take off here as it did in Japan?

Smallplaces - a Twitter novel written by news media editor/novelist N.L. Belardes.

Slice - A novel put out by Penguin Books was the story of a girl and her parents and was delivered by serialized LiveJournal and Twitter postings. (our coverage)

Novelsin3lines - From Félix Fénéon, these tweets are the "poems and novels and novels he never otherwise wrote."

GoodCaptain - The completed novel "The Good Captain," was a story by Jay Bushman and was based on "Benito Cereno" by Herman Melville.

Mrichtel - Matthew Richtel, NY Times reporter, is experimenting with Twitter as a place to write a real-time thriller. His is about a man who wakes up with amnesia and has a haunting feeling he is a murderer.

3MIAB - UK T-Shirt shop conceptTshirts started twittering a novel called "Three Men in a Boat," but seemed to have given up a year ago.

140novel - A Twitter novel created by Molly Wood, Tom Merritt, and Jason Howell of CNET's Buzz Out Loud podcast alongside Leo Laporte, who suggested the idea when he was guest on their show one day. (Read the whole thing here).

DailyLit - This online book club site which lets you read books via email or RSS recently added Twitter reading groups, too. Now you can read the following novels via Twitter and more will become available when these are completed. 

• TwitterID: DailyLitMagicK
  Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom 
• TwitterID: DailyLitPride
  Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
• TwitterID: DailyLitSucceed
  Tom Peters's 100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money

Unfortunately, they seem to have missed the concept of the Twitter novel altogether and are using Twitter to link to their web site instead:

Twittories - a collaborative effort where anyone can contribute to a Twitter novel that only runs for 140 entries. An author can only submit one entry per "twittory." Read the first Twittory here. 

Quillpill - Write your own Twitter novel! Quillpill novels aren't actually on Twitter itself, but use the app's Twitter-like 140-character-like system. You're encouraged to write and read novels from your call phone and they offer both a mobile and iPhone version.(our coverage)

Big in Japan Doesn't Mean Big Everywhere

Some of these efforts have been fun to follow, like 140novel and the latest "Twiller" from Matt Richtel, but could it be that they already have appeal because of the well-known personas of the authors? In Japan, the cell phone novels are making stars out of unlikely authors - like high school girls, for example, who were writing the short fiction in between their classes. Would a Twitter novel written by an unknown have the same appeal here? So far, we don't have a true winner yet. Perhaps this is one trend that doesn't translate?

"Here Ends the Beginning is much more than a conventional e-book," wrote Furlong to us in an emailed press release. "The text is punctuated throughout with video clips and photographs of actors recreating the characters and scenes. Music and sound effects further enhance this novel experience."

The first 5 chapters of the 43-chapter-long book are available for free, with the full book available for $12.95 CDN. But is this really the future of the novel?

We've seen a lot of experimentation with the traditional book publishing format over the past year. From an author using Amazon's Kindle ebook reader to beta test his book to one using blog comments to peer review another. From books being written and released on cell phones to novels being serialized and released over LiveJournal, Twitter, and Google Maps. Unfortunately, none of these experiences have so far been able to match the enjoyable, intimate feeling of curling up with an real, printed book -- at least for me.

Writing about Penguin's Google Maps-based novel mashup in April, Booklist's Keir Graff wrote, "It's an odd sensation, really: simple words can evoke a world in our imaginations, but as soon as the words are married to real-world images, they lose much of their power." The same thing can be said of Furlong's Quillr concept. While videos and images flowed well as far as where and how they were inserted into the text, they seemed to detract from my reading experience by breaking up the continuity of the "inner movie" I develop whenever I read a piece of fiction. Also, constantly having to scroll and click while reading a long piece of writing can be frustrating -- it's just not as natural or satisfying as turning pages in a book.

But perhaps that's due to my advanced age of 24 years old (ha!). Maybe multimedia-enhanced, web-delivered books will resonate better with a younger set of readers. Give Furlong's book a chance and then come back here and leave a comment letting us know what you thought. Is this an enjoyable way to read a book? Or are publishers barking up the wrong tree with experiments in web publishing that mash books with web technology?

The winning entry entry comes from Ron Gould:

"Time travel works!" the note read. "However you can only travel to the past and one-way." I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill.

The spirit of the Twitter Writing Contest is reminiscent of Hemingway's famous six-word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." It's said that Hemingway called those six words his greatest story ever, and two year's ago WIRED magazine brought together a group of best-selling authors to compose their own 6 word masterpieces.

Remember to check out Copyblogger for the other winning stories, and see Daniel Smith's blog for a slideshow of all 331 entries.

In theory, the system might work, but LiveBook may rely too heavily on its points scheme. Points aren't just used to add lines to the story, but are also a sort of creative currency within the application. It takes 5 points to add a new sentence, for example, starting a new chapter costs 20, and every time you vote for a sentence it costs you a point. Earning points is, according to the FAQ, a matter of inviting new users.

Presumably, having a sentence selected for inclusion also earns you points, but what this adds up to is a book that heavily relies on the popularity of the app to succeed. Since new users only start with 10 points (enough to add a couple of sentences or dole out a few votes before going bust), the app has to be popular or run the risk of having very few users with enough points to contribute -- which would suddenly make the crowd a lot smaller. Right now, the Facebook version of LiveBook has 45 active daily users.

Other Innovative Ways to Write Online

We've looked at a number of innovative new collaborative writing applications on ReadWriteWeb over the past year. Here's a brief overview:

Recently, Sarah Perez reviewed the very slick Protagonize, on which users can work together to create choose-your-own-adventure style stories, as well as more traditional linear collaborative fiction. Last June, we looked at six "fiction 2.0" applications. Collaborative writing apps Novlet, Portrayl, and Ficlets, are still going strong, but Unblokt, has since shut down, which is too bad because it had produced some suprisingly readable fiction (note, you can actually still read the completed stories by navigating to this link).

We also looked at the National Novel Writing Month, in which people attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in a single month. For the 2007 edition this past November, there were a whopping 1,187,931,929 words written, and of the 101,000 participants, over 15,000 managed to crank out a full 50k word novel. For the even more insane writer, there's the 3 Day Novel contest during which people compete for cash prizes by writing a novel in 3 days. They actually publish the winners, some of which have won awards.

On more than one occasion we've mentioned the One Million Penguins Project. A collaboration between De Montfort University and Penguin Publishing in the UK, the idea was to see if a novel could be written by the crowd via a wiki. The result? According to one organizer it was "unlike anything I’ve read before." The novel has been broke up into sections, which you can read online. The banana version may be the oddest.

Clearly, there are a lot of new and interesting ways to write fiction online, and participating in any one of which can be a lot of fun. What's your favorite?

Registered users at Protagonize receive their own author profile page, can write new stories, branches and chapters, add page markers, keep track of their favorite authors, add comments, rate stories, send items to friends, view and print stories, and more.

To get started with your first story, you click the "Protagonize!" link from the right-hand menu. If you want to contribute a branch or chapter to someone else's story, you find a story that has an incomplete story fragment. There will be a form to post a new fragment, instead of the normal branch or chapter content. Fill out the form with your new piece, press "Publish" once you're satisfied with your contribution, and it will be saved.

Different Types of Stories

Earlier this month, Protagonize began offering a new feature: linear stories. Originally, all stories on this site were addventure-style stories (yes, that's spelled right). Addventure stories, are much like the online component to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books you may have read as a child. An addventure story is an online, collaborative, interactive fiction in which many authors contribute to a story, each writing discrete segments.

However, now Protagonize is offering the ability for authors to create linear stories, which are more like a traditional novel with chapters. With this option, Protagonize hopes to appeal to a wider audience while also allowing authors to exert more thematic control over their stories.

No matter your story preference, Protagonize is a fun place to enjoy web-based collaborative fiction or explore your own inner author.