Hi Folks,

I have an idea for a website that I hope you will find interesting and useful, and I'd like your feedback on it please.

The idea is a website that brings together writers and publishers. It would create a marketplace in the way that eBay does for goods. Writers can publish sample chapters of their work, visitors to the site can read these and rate the work. Publishers who are interested in a writer's work place a bid; the highest bidder wins the right to publish the work. The writer pays a fee for listing their work, and a fee if a publisher pays to acquire the right to publish their work.

Advantages to Publishers:

1. They don't have to read through large amounts of rubbish to find quality work.
2. There is in-built market research provided by the review system.
3. The opportunity to discover new authors and bring their work to the marketplace.
4. An inexpensive and effective way of discovering new authors.

Advantages to Writers:

1. Getting feedback on work from readers.
2. The opportunity to have publishers read and buy work.
3. An inexpensive way of getting publisher exposure for your work and the chance of getting it published.

Thanks for your time,
Derek

Sounds like a great idea in theory but have you researched this idea with the potential users? I am sure you would get writers interested, but would publishers be interested is the question? Would they really have much demand for this?

Unless you could deliver the publishers (ie prove they were actually reading stuff) wouldn't the writers eventually fall away?

I don't know anything about this at all so I'm no help to you. It strikes me though that publishers already have mounds of admissions and are not always looking for new writers primarily anyway. It might be interesting to find out what proportion of publishing output is even from new writers.

As far as I can tell there isn't much of a publishers/agent presence on Writewords - couldn't they scour sites like this and get the same service for free?

Have you done any research on this? - It would be really interesting to know.

Would they be closed bids? What about contracts? It surely has to be more complicated than eBay doesn't it?

Actually, there are already several websites which already do this - some for free! - so you might like to check those out first??

A
xxx

A novel idea but liable to end up on the slush pile

The Frontlist already does something like this; also YouWriteOn, sponsored by the Arts Council and peer reviewed with the most popular submission sent to an agent.
I doubt any publisher or agent would have the time to sift through submissions online - they have high enough slush piles as it is.
Most are still very reluctant to recieve email submissions, let alone reading/printing chapters off a public website. If they were that interested they'd be checking out the talent on sites like this one.

I think there are already several places doing something very similar to the website you describe.

One point... every writer thinks that their work is 'good'. So publishers will still have to wade through it all, good and bad... what makes you think that publishers will be willing to wade through what is uploaded to this particular website?


vanessa

Hi Derek, it's great to see your enthusiasm, but I'm afraid I feel very strongly that your idea is a dud.

It would create a marketplace in the way that eBay does for goods.

But writing can't be confined into the 'buy/sell' marketplace. It's far more subjective than that.

Publishers who are interested in a writer's work place a bid; the highest bidder wins the right to publish the work.

I'm sorry - no publisher would ever work that way. Editors have to get the rest of the team to agree before making a firm offer to publish, and quite often they will have direct contact with the writer beforehand - and most certainly with his or her agent.

Advantages to Publishers: 1. They don't have to read through large amounts of rubbish to find quality work. 2. There is in-built market research provided by the review system. 3. The opportunity to discover new authors and bring their work to the marketplace. 4. An inexpensive and effective way of discovering new authors.

But the work on the site is being reviewed and graded by other writers - not by agents or by editors. So the review system is meaningless since it is not being used by the people who actually have to produce and sell the books. Plus you have suggested that publishers would actually make an offer based on a short excerpt of a writer's novel. Again, this simply wouldn't happen. You are also suggesting that publishers have trouble finding new authors - now, if they can't find people good enough through the usual submissions process, what makes you think they'll find them online? People are far more likely to upload work that has not been thoroughly checked. The current submissions process weeds out a lot of people who aren't organised or committed to submitting - they have to find the publisher's address, print off an error-free manuscript, write and print a cover letter, find two envelopes and pay for two lots of postage. By the time it arrives at the publisher's, it has already passed the first stage of actually being submitted. Online submissions do not require the same amount of commitment and preparation.

Advantages to Writers: 1. Getting feedback on work from readers. 2. The opportunity to have publishers read and buy work. 3. An inexpensive way of getting publisher exposure for your work and the chance of getting it published.

Again, the feedback to writers will be from other people who are a) not necessarily good writers themselves b) not in the publishing industry. Of what help will their responses be?

I had a look at the Front List the other day. It already does what you are proposing, and I can't see that it will get very far either. There is one publisher and one agent on board - which is great, but a tiny percentage of the opportunities out there. And again, the feedback is provided by readers who don't all necessarily know what the market is looking for or can even recognise good writing when they see it.

Sorry to be so negative about your idea, but really, it's a non-starter.

Another point to note: any writer who was taken up by a publisher in this way would be without the protection, legal awareness and publishing-world knowhow, of a good agent. Such a writer would have to negotiate rights and understand contracts, and would be very vulnerable either to outright exploitation or the the natural desire of publishers to acquire bundled rights on advantageous terms.

Naomi

I have to say that I don't think this would work either, for all the reasons people - especially Moondance - have stated. Publishers don't go looking for publishable work among aspiring writers. It comes from agents, from what they commission of non-fiction, and occasionally - very occasionally - it comes via the slushpile. They don't have the time to look further afield, nor do they have any faith that there's better work out there. Even in the slushpile only five manuscripts in a hundred are worth reading past the first page: I don't think there's anything in what you propose that would make them think such a site would be any different.

Emma

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to reply. It seems my idea needs further refinement or just dropped.

All the best with your writing and have a great Christmas and New Year.

Derek

You too Derek.

Are you a writer? Why not stick around for a while and see how things pan out. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the forums.

Dee