Skip to content

Your browser is no longer supported. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

The 24hr Book

In collaboration with if:book, The Society of Young Publishers and CompletelyNovel.com, Spread the Word commissioned The 24hr Book, a groundbreaking project to challenge a group of writers to write a new story about London in just 24 hours.

The book was written by a group of experienced writers who worked together, using all kinds of online collaborative tools around the clock.

The lead writer for The 24 Hour Book was Kate Pullinger and writers participating included Sarah Butler, Kati Rynne, Aoife Mannix, Dean Atta, Cath Drake, Ben Payne, Chris Meade, Toni Le Busque, Saradha Soobrayen and Shamim Azad.

The final book was published under a Creative Commons license and is available to buy from CompletelyNovel.

The 24hr Book is based around a group of city centre allotments and the story explores ideas of shared and private space and the real and imaginary barriers between a range of city characters.

The writing went on throughout Saturday 3 October 2009, and on Sunday 4 October 2009 a group of volunteer editors and publishers moved in to make the story ready for publication.

As well as making the book accessible to read online, CompletelyNovel also produced print-on-demand copies.

The first 100 copies sold out in five minutes at the launch party but copies are still available through CompletelyNovel.

Back to Archive