Authonomy Online Writers' Community
How Writing Site Is Helping Aspiring Authors to Get Published
Mar 31, 2009
Authonomy is a new online community for writers developed by editors at HarperCollins in the UK.
It's a place for aspiring writers to show their face – and words – and hopefully catch the eye of publishing professionals. While it’s a work-in-progress and has its critics, it has notched up the odd spectacular success.
Coffee at Kowalski's Hits the Jackpot
Miranda Dickinson wrote Coffee at Kowalski’s, a romance set in a New York florists', over seven years for her own entertainment because she couldn’t afford a trip to the Big Apple. ‘I never intended to send it out for publication,’ she says. ‘I popped it onto Authonomy to see what comments I would get.’
The comments she got included some brilliant feedback from HarperCollins itself – the offer of a three-book deal.
Coming to Terms With Success
Without Authonomy, Miranda says, ‘there’s no way I would have been picked up. I’m still coming to terms with it.’
Authonomy.com works like this. Writers post at least 10,000 words of a manuscript for the community to comment on and maybe recommend. Authonomy counts the recommendations and ranks the books. Each month the top five books appear on what's called the Editor's Desk and are reviewed by HarperCollins editors, who give the author feedback.
However, being top of the pops on the Editor’s Desk doesn’t guarantee a book deal. In fact, when Authonomy announced its first three sign-ups in January 2009, none of the writers were Editor’s Desk rankers. This led to criticism from a few site users (which, to its credit, Authonomy displays on its blog), which claimed the lucky threesome were well-connected with publishing insiders and Authonomy was not really about unearthing new talent.
Miranda Dickinson Had Just Lost Her Job When Her Book Was Spotted
Not true, Miranda says. She had no contacts, no agent and felt like ‘a hick’ when she came down from Stourbridge in the West Midlands to meet the editing team at HarperCollins’ offices in London. Her only publishing success had been short stories published online and in a charity anthology. She was sick of failing at competitions and while she built up courage to pitch a Terry Pratchett-style manuscript to publishers, she decided to test her romance story on Authonomy.
Miranda, age 36, had just lost her job as a copy writer when HarperCollins editor Sammia Rafique spotted her story on Authonomy and emailed her.
Authonomy Is a Good Showcase for Unpublished Authors
‘Sammia said, don't get your hopes up but we’re calling in a range of manuscripts that we found on Authonomy and would like to see in full,' Miranda told this writer. 'So then I had to write the last bit of my manuscript because I hadn't finished it. It was a good thing I lost my job at that time, so I spent three days writing 20,000 words. A week later I got a letter from the publishing director at [HarperCollins] Avon, Maxine Hitchcock, saying she'd really enjoyed Coffee at Kowalski's.’
The book will be published in November and Miranda is now working on her second novel.
She is clear that the value of Authonomy is not as a popularity contest for expert networkers, as some critics have suggested, but as a showcase for a writer’s work. ‘If it can happen to me it can happen to anyone. It never occurred to me when I posted my book on Authonomy that a massive publishing company like HarperCollins would be interested in it.’
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