Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Hey all,

I have not been on in a while because I have been checking out sites like Authonomy, run by Harper Collins. Wondering what you guys think of all these sites designed to put your work on display with the hope that someone will read it and either sign you or support you enough that you can be reviewed by a publisher, usually one running the site. There is Knight Publishing as well but they look more like self publishing. Then there is all the digital publishing going on through Amazon, are those guys getting exposure, is anyone buying their books? I wonder about all this or if we are all still better playing the industry game and holding out for an agent? What are your thoughts?

JaEvans

Have there been any success stories on these sites? I used to dip in to Authonomy, but haven't checked it out for a long time now.

I have my doubts, but you never know. It could happen. For now, I'll stick with trying the traditional route and see where it leads.

Forty thousand-some more or less highly polished pretty faces at authonomy; I've heard of two that got picked up for publishing. CreateSpace and Lulu, many thousands more, again, few, if any, picked up for widespread distribution.

However, I don't discount them as sources for material to review. I spend considerable time grazing those sites' free offerings looking for material to critique invisibly. I rarely post my responses. What I do is pick out vices and virtues and contrast and compare them with published works.

authonomy in particular is a gold mine for prospecting for writing vices to avoid. Lulu's free offerings are good for book design and layout vices to avoid.

I guess what I'm saying is, I can avoid all the potential unpleasantness of critique exchange by sampling authonomy's offerings for what insights I can glean. When all is said and done, critique done well benefits critiquer more than a writer's ongoing project, thus improving a critiquer's writing and editing skills.

Number one for me is deciphering why any given narrative doesn't hold my interest. I've found several commonalities, forced figurative language, attitudeless voice, unsettled narrative point of view, disjointed narrative distance, slow and jumpy narrative pace, And Plots, and the perennial trite motifs and tropes of unimagintive reinvention. In other words, low audience rapport development. Oftentimes, the vices are more a matter of what's missing than what's given.