My 'authonomy experience'

As some of you know, I put my ms up on Authonomy last month and it's about time I detailed my experiences on the site. First impressions were that the site was easy to navigate and you could be as full-on or part-time as you wished. So I signed up. I set up a page, picked some books that I fancied reading and read and commented and moved some of them onto my bookshelf. After a week of dipping my toe in the water, I uploaded my ms. First thing you have to do is come up with a 25 word pitch, which is not as easy as it sounds! Then you write your own blurb, next comes a cover - you can upload your own or use one of theirs. To upload the book itself you have to split the chapters up into separate docs and upload those to build your book. Add a few tags and voila you go live and start to get feedback - and if you're not careful that's when the floodgates open. People offer you read swops, a literary version of 'you scratch my back'. Anyway after adjusting my page to say what I don't feel qualified to read and stemming the flow of requests. I began reading and commenting in earnest. I only comment on books I really like and if I shelve a book, it is most likely to stay on my shelf the whole month. You really don't want to know how many I have on my watchlist right now. On the whole so far the experience has been good, I've discovered some cracking unpublished authors, been heckled a couple of times for not returning the read swop favour, and my feedback is honest, I'm not going to gush over a book if the ms is full of typos, commits the show don't tell sin or doesn't hold my interest. You don't have to be logged in to read a book (if you want to comment or watchlist then of course you do)

The holy grail of most authonomists is to reach the top five and get reviewed by the editors desk at Harpercollins. While my book is still going up (position 1401 as we speak) the comments are the goal for me. I'm actually researching self publishing - more about that later.

Would I advise other unpublished authors to have a go on Authonomy? - absolutely. Just set your boundaries and stick to them, be polite, give constructive feedback and above all enjoy it.