Calling all ye story tellers..

Wanna write the next chapters of ‘Gone with the wind’ or ditch all this and start your own novel?

TheNeverEndingStory is a unique new online facility that for the first time allows Internet users from anywhere in the world to read, and importantly contribute to, a range of constantly evolving ongoing online publications including stories and poems started by well-known authors and personalities or site members themselves.

The way it works is that

You can participate in any of the existing stories [even the classic ones] or start your own.
You can invite people to add chapters/twists to the stories too
The admin can edit/remove the submissions from other authors.
Once you are done with your own online copy, TheNeverEndingStory will publish your book [credits to all authors], depending on the quality of the output.

And now the million dollar question:

Will you earn royalties?
Yes and No. Yes, if you are the admin. No, if you aren’t [i.e. you are only a contributor]. According to the FAQ:

Unfortunately not; due to the complex nature of collaborative book creation it would be extremely difficult to pay royalties to all the people who have contributed to an individual book. However, members who have contributed to a collaborative online publication that becomes a book can buy copies at a discounted rate.

I am sure a service like this can be easily expanded in various interesting directions – right from partnering with publishing house to integrating with blogging platform [yes, many people use blogs for story telling - why not allow them to make stories out of them?].