There’s a new site in town, Worthy of Publishing. It sort of mashes the Threadless and MySpace democratic business models, to unpublished authors.
Basically, you sign-up and submit a synopsis, samples, etc. of your book. Then other people in the community go around reading and voting. The idea is that the cream will rise to the top and get the most votes/attention. Once that attention has hit a ‘critical mass’, publishers will step up sign the author and publish the book, banking on that ‘critical mass’ as an indicator of potential sales and interest in the title.
I’ve yet to find a self-published book that I enjoyed. I tend to have to lean on the profesional book folks to weed out the weaker stuff. Which I’m always greatful for them doing.
But this model intrigues me and I’m anxious to see if the “wisdom of crowds” theory applies here. I could see it happening…
LibraryThing is hosting SantaThing this year. For $25, you get to play Secret Santa to someone. Which means you peruse a user’s library, decide what book(s) they must have/would enjoy and then tell Library Thing. They’ll buy and ship the book(s) for you and your done!
All the while, someone else is looking through your library/blog and turning in a list for you to get. What a cool idea! Though, it might be kinda scary what someone might send me based on their “impression” of my collection.
The downside, there is only one day left to decide, as the deadline is December 13th at high noon!
I ran across this pretty good analysis of Amazon’s Kindle just after I ran across a cool new (to me anyway) book blog The Written Nerd. That Kindle post almost had me crying! To quote one line…
“Kindle combines your love of reading with your even bigger love of putting your book down so it can recharge for three hours.”
I noticed a couple of days ago that the Friends of Independent Bookstores blog was down. All I get is a big blank error page whenever I visit. I was hoping it was just technical trouble. But it seems Larry Portzline has pulled the plug on his project to travel/support/raise awareness of the value of independent bookstores. For more than five years…