by the way, if anyone wants to see an example of an experiment aimed at eliciting reader interaction at the stage of a "finished first draft" of a book, see:
this project of "the institute for the future of the book" just went up today. in addition to an ability to comment on any _paragraph_ of the book, there is a general forum. i'm of the opinion that most books probably will not be able to find a sufficiently large number of commenters to warrant the work that an author will have to do to open up the process of writing to such interaction. but it's an interesting experiment. and then of course there will always be some _major_ exceptions, on the order of chris anderson and the blog he has been keeping while writing his "long tail" book. because of the great exposure the idea got from its description in a "wired" cover story last year, and because anderson just happens to be the editor of "wired", and because -- let's face it -- the idea is a _very_ compelling one that therefore subsequently has been written up all over the place, anderson's "long tail" blog has been a tremendously exciting space. but my sense is that this will be the _exception_, rather than the rule. -bowerbird