I subscribe to the notion that too many authors on a book will probably make for a bad book, but some advice and encouragement along the way could probably help.  After reading this article on WEBooks, it's not very clear to me what side of the spectrum this web service is (perhaps if covers the entire spectrum).  Despite whatever this article says about everybody being an author via this service, it doesn't seem to me that is what this service does.  It looks like the works are vetted by self declared experts and the participants on this site decide what gets published and what does not.  Those that are not selected to be published can “self publish”.  I guess this yet another avenue for first time writers, but given the throughput quoted in this article, I'm not sure how different this is from a traditional publisher other than it's wrapped in the novel cloak of being on the web and “crowdsourced.”  I do like the idea, though, of aspiring authors forming a community for mutual support.

Bethesda Start-Up Makes Writing a Little Less Lonely