Shelfari is looking to spur author-reader community through editable author profiles (here’s an example). From TechCrunch:
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.
LibraryThing, another community-centric book site, also offers a level of editable profile information.
(Via Peter Brantley’s read20 listserv.)