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Can a thousand people write a book?

10 Years Ago


Hi everyone, my name is Ferdinand and I am not a writer, but a student developer. A few months ago I asked myself if a book could be written by hundreds or even thousands of people at the same time. There are a lot of reasons why this should be impossible: Coordination, talent, continuity and many more.   

Yet, I realized that platforms like reddit are decent enough at self-moderation and selection of good content. What if we could break down a book into hundreds of small blocks that could be curated by other writers and readers? So I started building an application that would allow each and every one of its users to participate, be it in writing or just by reading, commenting and upvoting the work of others. In theory, this application would be capable of creating a story with infinite branches. And – again in theory – whatever would end up being the most popular branch could well be called a book written by thousands of people.   

Today, the first raw iteration of this application is finished: Novelista. I would like to welcome you to participate in this experiment with me. More concretely I would love for you to take part in a closed alpha for Novelista.   

This is a great opportunity for you – as a writer – as well: You can try out small ideas and get immediate feedback on them. You can even play out different versions of a story and see which one resonates better with the reader. There are already a number of users checking the app for new chapters, but we are lacking people who enjoy to write!   

You can download the application right now for free on any Windows 10 device (Desktop, Phone, Tablet) using the link below:     

If you have any feedback or questions: please do not hesitate to get in touch, this is very much a work in progress! :)   

Lastly here are some visual impressions of the current state of the app, keep in mind these are a work in progress: