A new edition of A Farewell To Arms went on sale last week. It contained nearly fifty alternative endings.
On the same day, The Globe and Mail carried this story: “A Toronto writer is offering the public a chance to find out. Writer and filmmaker Daniel Perlmutter (above right) is mixing crowdsourcing and crowdfunding to create a novel with paid contributions – the more you pay, the greater the play.
“For $15, you get a sentence. For $20, you can pick a location where some of the story takes place; $30 lets you invent a character. On it goes, to $750 for the right to determine the book’s genre (sci-fi, romance, whatever); $900 for the opportunity to name the book; up to $1,000 to decide how the whole thing ends.”
Even before he got his Nobel Prize, Ernest Hemingway (above left) could easily have afforded to hire Daniel Perlmutter to help him out.
Great writing is an individual endeavour rather than a collaborative sport.
How much does it cost to write the whole book and put Daniel Perlmutter’s name on the cover as author? (And who gets the royalties?)