Kind of matches another idea I had, but never got around to making, where it was kind of a mystery novel, but it was written in segments, and each purchased PDF would create a random assortment of like 30% of those segments, with some enforcement of sequencing or acts to keep them somewhat coherent, and in some of those segments would be some pretty crazy relevations, and then there's a shared community book available to anyone who's purchased a copy of the individualized book, that auto-includes any passages that people choose to share from their copies (or I could just let people do it themselves, add it to a wiki or whatever).
But they could also choose to keep it private if they wanted, and the website would let everyone know how many times each passage has been generated (but not shared).
I even considered making the tech in a way that if successful I could open it up to others to make and sell their own stories like that, like a dedicated website.
Problem is, you need to write a story that works with that format, and that's difficult. I started a bit of work on it, and then got distracted by other projects.
It's kind of like those old sticker books back in the day, where you buy packs of stickers and put them in numbered spots in the book and it slowly reveals the whole picture. Loved getting those back when I was a kid.
Also getting the random generation right so it doesn't like give everything away after just 10 books sold.
Still like the idea though. Maybe someday I'll get back around to it.
Kind of matches another idea I had, but never got around to making, where it was kind of a mystery novel, but it was written in segments, and each purchased PDF would create a random assortment of like 30% of those segments, with some enforcement of sequencing or acts to keep them somewhat coherent, and in some of those segments would be some pretty crazy relevations, and then there's a shared community book available to anyone who's purchased a copy of the individualized book, that auto-includes any passages that people choose to share from their copies (or I could just let people do it themselves, add it to a wiki or whatever).
But they could also choose to keep it private if they wanted, and the website would let everyone know how many times each passage has been generated (but not shared).
I even considered making the tech in a way that if successful I could open it up to others to make and sell their own stories like that, like a dedicated website.
Problem is, you need to write a story that works with that format, and that's difficult. I started a bit of work on it, and then got distracted by other projects.
It's kind of like those old sticker books back in the day, where you buy packs of stickers and put them in numbered spots in the book and it slowly reveals the whole picture. Loved getting those back when I was a kid.
Also getting the random generation right so it doesn't like give everything away after just 10 books sold.
Still like the idea though. Maybe someday I'll get back around to it.