Shelfari, the Amazon-backed community network around books, has introduced editable author profiles in hopes that it can become a destination for not only biographical information but interactions between authors and their fans as well.

Each author's page will feature an open wiki in addition to a message board and a list of written books. Shelfari hopes to set itself apart from other big name wikis (namely Wikipedia) by encouraging authors themselves to join the community and modify their own pages. Many sites tend to discourage this practice because of obvious bias concerns, but Shelfari believes the interaction to be seen between authors and their fans will compensate for this drawback.

With the introduction of these new profiles, Shelfari is poised to become a uniquely rich repository of literary information, and has the potential to become an