Has anybody had experience/got any views on this web-site. In a nutshell, you upload the opening chapters of your work and request another persons work to review (obtaining a credit) and when you have a certain number of credits you might get into the top ten and might get a crit from a well known publisher.

I've had a look but the website seems messy and complicated, and when I tried to do what it calls "a free will review" it didn't work for me.

NB: It was mentioned in Writers Forum this week.

Well...you'd have to email me privately. Very mixed feelings about my experience with it.

Sorry to be so secret squirrel

Will do!

Whole set of posts here, about YWO and similar manuscript review sites.

http://howpublishingreallyworks.blogspot.com/search/label/YouWriteOn

Emma

Thanks Emma. That was very informative - a useful reference. I'll check out Authonomy next.

Authonomy is great if you want a peek at what Agents' slush piles are composed of, but if you're planning to upload a mss on the site treat it as just one more submission out of the 50-odd you'll be making in the normal course of things anyway. The best you can really hope for is to get to the top five and be rewarded with a free editorial report. Harper Collins very, very, rarely pick anything out of the pile for publication, and when they do it's usually an mss that would have been published anyway, if the writer had just submitted it to agents the normal way.


- NaomiM

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I'm on there as NMott, getting critting practice on pitches, if anyone would like me to back their book.

I must be getting grumpy in my old age . . .

I never heard of Youwriteon.com, so just spent some time there. It's hard to see how their peer review system works when they keep offering my a chance to buy the novels in question as e-books. That's seperate again from the vanity publishing end. It's also very badly laid out with a confusion of colours and typefaces. Grump!

I did join Litopia but instantly had a run in with the moderator when I asked why it too so long to get into the 'inner circle'. I also find the idea of a real time video of the agent in question reading my work as a bit too much like the X-Factor. Grump! Grump!

I guess we are all different and some sites suit each of us better than others. End of Grump.

Ben Yezir

The dynamics of a forum, and the dynamics of a competitive system, sit awkwardly together. There's a fascinating post on the Dirty Sparkle blog, about the psychology of what's going on, but I can't find it at the moment...

Emma

One of our members has had success via youwriteon, but, tbh, was a very talented writer to begin with so with persistance I think she would have got published regardless. But having a support group via backing on one of these showcase sites probably does help to keep one positive as one is struggling to be published.


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One of the pitfals of such sites is the pressure to self-publish via an ebook on the false premiss that it will help you get spotted by an agent. Instead that novel will pretty much be dead & buried.

As others have highlighted, a competitive element makes both YouWriteOn and Authonomy quite different from WriteWords. I find WriteWords much more practically useful in terms of honing my skills, learning from others and receiving feedback from those who have some knowledge - or at the very least interest - in my genre. For me the competitive element of YWO means the feedback is a lot less practically useful. Of course, if you get into the top 10 it might be worth the effort, but I gave up and migrated over here. Similarly with authonomy, where you can spend a LOT of time networking/marketing your book to other members rather than getting useful feedback. Again, maybe its worth it to get to the top.

So basically, depends what you're after.

Again, maybe its worth it to get to the top.

One of the old hands on Authonomy recently quoted a figure of 3 publications via Harper Collins, out of 10,000-odd submissions since the site wass set up, and none of them were ones who had reached the top 5 each month and earned themselves an editorial report. They also said that those writers were now waiting more than 5 months for their reports.