Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Anthonomy - Is It Worth It ?

A good friend of mine, Sue-Bear, gave me a link to a site called Authonomy.
The idea behind this site is great. Authors and readers get to vote on work downloaded by wannabe authors. The top five works each month are read by HarperCollins reviewers, hopefully resulting in offers to publish.
I was initially excited when I learnt about this site. And daunted. It's one thing to think you've got something a little special, but to put it out there and have it judged openly against others' work is potentially fraught with public humiliation.
But the potential rewards!
Only, it doesn’t seem to work like that. I spent a couple of nights going through the site, and while I’m prepared to admit I could have missed it, I can’t see one book that the HarperCollins people have picked up.
I did see an author found an agent and was published but this was because the agent read a piece on the site and liked it. And I’m assuming he would have liked it if the author had sent it to him anyway.
But my point is that there doesn’t seem to be any joy given out by the people who set the site up.
And there was some seriously good stuff there.
Some of the reports from Users isn't glowing either. One thread I read was scathing in its criticism of a review of one work in which the reviewer spoke of the two female lead characters, when in fact one was a male. I mean, if that's the quality of the reviewers, you've got to wonder.
If you’re a budding author, check out the site for yourself and see what you think. Maybe you can see value in it.


And if you find I'm wrong about the HarperCollins people and that they have in fact picked someone up from the site, let me know.

What I did find at Authonomy was a book cover layout that I really liked. :)

1 comment:

  1. thanks for your insight, i have just found this site, thanks

    ReplyDelete