Silvia Hartmann is exploring the idea of allowing the reader to follow the creation of a novel by writing on Google Docs. you can follow her on real time here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AwxZlO1uVnFFKh_NWAlZ78oK... With Github we can add to this the revision history plus branching, forking... I think we can go beyond the idea of a novel as a unique finished version written by a unique author. Novels could be as open source software : you don't have a finished product, but versions, and you don't have an author, but several contributors.