Australian author P.D. Martin is <a href="http://www.pdmartin.com.au/ebook/?page_id=8" target="_blank">trying an interesting experiment over on her web site</a>. She's letting readers determine the direction of her current book. Let Philippa explain it herself....
<blockquote>I’ve decided on the title and basic premise of my e-book, which I’ll write over a 12-week period, starting Wednesday 25 November. Although the first chapter will work a little differently, basically each week you’ll vote on how you want the next chapter to unfold, using different scenarios I put forward. At the end of the short voting period, I’ll have six days to write that chapter reflecting your directions. Think of it like a ‘choose your own adventure’ except majority rules and there’ll only be one book/plot sequence at the end of it.</blockquote>
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I'm all for experiments in writing and I'll be interested to see how this one works out. When I was a journalist I spent lots of time in Japan talking to companies like Sony and Sharp about how they envisaged the future. I well remember one company inventing a system, pre-DVD, where different parts of a movie were shot to allow viewers to pick the course of the story. At pivotal events they could turn left or right, decide who won who lost, and a variety of other things. It went through research. Most viewers hate it and the idea never went into production.

With the advent of the Internet perhaps things are changing. It's good that writers like Philippa are trying out ideas like this. Not for me though. I'm far too much of a tyrant. My job's writing books. Yours is reading them, should you so choose, of course.