It's one of those
YADS = Yet Another Display Site
These are places where you upload your novel's chapters - or maybe just one chapter - on the off chance that an editor or agent will "stroll by" that particular site, go nuts at your masterpiece, and sign you up.
Nice dream, anyway.
Most of them are pipe dreams or wish fulfillments (welcome to the Cliche Express ;-)), and the only publishers and agents that show up are the bottom feeders.
They've popped up on the Internet in many different shapes and shades before, usually never to be seen again.
But this is being run by Harper Collins, so maybe it is different because of the tie-in to a well-known publisher.
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This, essentially, is an online slush pile for Harper Collins.
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Alan Baxter, a self-published author from Australia, has this to say about Authonomy:
“Beat the slush” is the tagline and that’s something that will appeal to all writers. In a nutshell, it’s a website where people can upload full or partial manuscripts and have them read and voted on by other members of the site. People can back a book and subsequently raise it up the ranks, comment on it, recommend it to friends and so on.
He also says that the idea is that "every month [have] five books that have floated to the top...put before relevant editors at Harper Collins and considered for traditional publication." Not a bad deal, except it looks as if, from the news I've just seen, that Harper Collins has signed only three (I guess the other two must've been really, really bad). Just remember that that's 3 writers out of 2,000 submissions.
Yeah, that's a slush pile, all right.
Here's the blog entry wherein HC tells us a little bit about those they've signed - no fantasy novels among them :-(.
I just don't know what to make of this, but my gut is telling me to shy away. After all, if only the critting part of it is good, I'll just stick to the Water Cooler's Share Your Work forum.
What do you think?
Love and kisses,
~Nancy Beck
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