Just another slush pile
Posted by webmaster | Filed under Uncategorized
I saw a site mentioned in this month’s Reader’s Digest (of all places), Authonomy.
The gist is this, you put up your novel on the site, which is run by Harper Collins, it gets voted on, and the top novels get read by editors at HC.
That led me to doing some research on whether other publishers are doing something similar. One of the first sites I found was Writer Beware Blogs, which is a site I head to whenever something looks a little too good to be true. They give a good summary of Authonomy, including some of the potential problems. Essentially, they argue that it’s still the slush pile of old, just moved online.
Authonomy seems to be combining the traditional slush pile with social networking. Instead of an agent or reader looking at your work, online readers do. If you’ve used any social networking sites like StumbleUpon or Digg, then you probably know that it’s not just the quality of your work that makes you popular. It’s also the quality of your social network.
So, I can see a mediocre novel getting more attention that a good one, providing the author has an active network on the site. Fair? Not really, but that’s the way popularity on all social networking sites works.
So, has anyone used a site like this? If so, I’d like to know how it worked out for you.
Further Reading
- None Found
