The Liminal Librarian

This is somewhat old news, but HarperCollins has launched a new site, Authonomy, that aims to be a sort of social slushpile:

authonomy invites unpublished and self published authors to post their manuscripts for visitors to read online. Authors create their own personal page on the site to host their project – and must make at least 10,000 words available for the public to read.

Visitors to authonomy can comment on these submissions – and can personally recommend their favourites to the community. authonomy counts the number of recommendations each book receives, and uses it to rank the books on the site. It also spots which visitors consistently recommend the best books – and uses that info to rank the most influential trend spotters.

We hope the authonomy community will guide publishers straight to the freshest writing talent – and will give passionate and thoughtful readers a real chance to influence what’s on our shelves.

This site cracks me up, partially because the #2 book on their charts right now is titled Vlad the Inhaler:

Full of dark humour, Vlad the Inhaler tells of an eleven-year-old vegetarian and asthmatic hupyre (half-human/half-vampire) who has to overcome cowardice to rescue his friends.

Well, why not? If you’ve ever wanted to spot — or be noticed as — unsung new talent, here’s your chance.

And, if you need some fodder for your Authonomy submission, Debbie Ridpath Ohi today sings the praises of mining your own spam folder for character names. Talk about reuse/recycle!