I received an email today from Authonomy, the Harper-Collins website to "flush out the brightest, freshest new writing talent around" (their words) or the online "open slushpile" to use another description. (The Guardian called it an "outsourced slushpile".) You probably read recently how this cynicism was not in the event borne out, when Harper Collins offered publishing deals to three authors who had uploaded their books to the site (Authonomy's announcement is here).
Today's email (and, doubtless, press release) is to say that one of the three authors, Miranda Dickinson, is going to write a series of posts on the Authonomy blog detailing "her journey from unpublished to published author". She describes in her first post the excitement of getting a book deal. I enjoyed reading her post, which starts well: .."let me start at the beginning... Picture, if you will, a small office somewhere near Birmingham airport, September ‘08. This was my workplace – and things were not boding well for my job. We’d started to notice that work just wasn’t coming in, with our bosses remaining tight-lipped about the reasons why."
Each month, editors at Harper Collins read the five titles that have received the most votes from site visitors. This month's selections are up, if you want to take a look (link in first sentence of this post). I'm quite intrigued to see how this project pans out, as it sounds as if it has got a lot better than when I last looked, which was at the time of the official, post-beta launch. My best wishes to the selected authors.
Yes, that writing is really inviting, isn't it - and equally importantly, will generate a ready-made audience for when the book comes out, I expect.
Posted by: Clare D | 03 February 2009 at 18:05