I did a quick comparison of bitcoin stock exchanges today and thought I'd share my initial impressions. Please let me know if I missed any major exchanges, or if I got the wrong impression anywhere:
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.
Don't judge a book by the cover. Looking at the total volume of the exchange does not tell you much. For example, a huge amount of the volume on BTCT is just from one stock (actually several pass-throughs to the same stock, AsicMiner).
for MPEX the 30 btc fee is not for listing, but to register a key to use the exchange. They have the best security model. Cryptostocks is older than BTCT or BitFunder, but not many people use it because the operator is rather shady. (and what Deprived said while I was typing)
For doing a crowdfunding project, you definitely won't get it on MPEx (that is just not the sort of thing listed there), you will probably have trouble getting it on BTCT. You might be able to get it onto BitFunder. You could look into
BitStarter, I think they do that sort of thing.