Would you let fans read your book as you write it?

UK author Silvia Hartmann will launch “The Naked Writer” project on September 12th, letting her readers follow along on Google Docs as she writes her next novel. Hartmann (pictured) will share the Google Docs link via her social networks. Whoever clicks on the link can offer feedback and watch her work.

Hartmann explained in the release: “This is an amazing opportunity for me as an author to push the boundaries of the author/reader relationship. It will be amazing to write knowing that people will be viewing each word, paragraph and chapter, each backspace as I go along! Some authors plan their manuscripts in advance, but my stories tend to have a life of their own and I look forward to seeing what unfolds with everybody else!”

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Chicago-based storyteller Willy Chyr is hosting an experiment he calls The Collabowriters, a “novel by the internet.”

Here’s more about the experiment: “The novel is written one sentence at a time. For each sentence, anyone can enter a submission (up to 140 characters). Users, such as yourself, then vote on each submission, giving it a score of either +1 or -1. The submission with the highest score becomes the sentence in the novel, or at least until another submission surpasses its score.”

Once a submission receives a score of five, Chyr (pictured, via) will add it to the novel. As of this writing, four paragraphs (333 words) have been written. This crowdsourced novel stars a widower named Zachary.

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