The reason I'm looking into this is that I'm thinking of doing crowdfunding for a literary project, and rather than appealing to straight philanthropy, I thought it'd be more fun and effective to sell shares of the proposed book. Is anyone aware of this having been done before? I'm not. Any thoughts are appreciated.
A stock exchange listing is not appropriate for your book project. I recommend that you try Kickstarter or one of the other crowd-funding sites. These sites are designed specifically for projects like yours.