A system and method for having a plurality of participants author and submit segment candidates to create a collaborative work over a computer network. The plurality of participants receive segment instructions for authoring the segment candidates. The candidates are submitted to the system and at least a subset of the submitted segment candidates are distributed to a voting audience over the computer network. In response the system receives votes for a favored segment candidate from the voting audience. Next, a winning segment candidate is selected from the submitted segment candidates for inclusion in the collaborative work based on the votes. This process is repeated by the system until the collaborative work is complete.