Why I'm Leaving Authonomy

If you've somehow been missed by all the advertising - viral or otherwise - Authonomy is a website run by HarperCollins. Authors can post part or all of their books on the site and other participants (mostly other authors) get to read them, comment on them and vote for them. There is a ranking scheme so that you can see how popular your book is with the other members. Another website quite like this has also just started, called Writing Raw, it is basically the same deal except for one crucial difference. On Authonomy, HarperCollins promises that their editors will take a look at the top five ranked books each month.

The chance of having a major publisher actually look at your work has proven irresistable to many authors (myself included). When I joined, about a week ago, my book was allocated the number 3,403 and I estimate that about 200 books a week are being added to the site (I don't know how many are being removed). I know many people reading this blog might also be tempted to join, so I thought I'd write a few notes about my experience with Authonomy and why I'm leaving it.

1. The first and foremost reason is that the cost-benefit equation is not working out for me. I am spending too much time on the site and yet it doesn't look as if I'll make the top five - which is the main point of doing it. My book 'Time and Tyde' has been well received and I've had some very flattering comments about it. It also climbed steadily in the rankings - from the bottom to about half-way up in five days - but now it has stalled in this mid-league position and the only way to get it moving again would be to spend more time on the Authonomy site. This is because
2. Everyone on Authonomy is hustling. If I say Authonomy is a popularity contest, you probably won't get the full flavour of it. The way to get your book read on Authonomy is to plug it. You join the forums, you start threads, you comment on other people's books, you make 'I'll read yours if you read mine' deals, you invite 'friends' (yes, like MySpace!), and on and on and on. You plug and you plug and you plug. Putting up your book is the least of it. Being successful on Authonomy is a matter of constant, intensive marketing. And it works. The people whose names come up in all the forums, whose comments are all over the site, are the same people who are highest in the rankings. I'm not saying their books are no good. They're mostly quite readable. What I'm saying is that if you're a good writer but you're not a good, persistent, single-minded marketer, with loads of spare time, Authonomy is not for you.
3. Even as a popularity contest, Authonomy is not ideal. Some genres (particularly sience fiction) and sub-genres (comedy) are grossly over-represented, compared with book markets in the real world. I suspect this is partly because Authonomy is a more accurate cross-section of writers than it is of readers, and partly because those writers in genres for which it is most difficult to find a publisher, are the ones frustrated enough, or desperate enough, to try Authonomy. So if your book hits the top five, my guess is that it will still struggle to get past the HarperCollins editors who will have a much more market-oriented view of what is publishable.
4. There is an awful lot of rubbish on the site. I've tried to read widely and not just to follow the herd's recommendations and, while I'm sure the overall standard must be miles higher than a site like Writing Raw (just because Authonomy is attracting some serious writers) I still find I am handing out detailed advice to writers who don't seem to know even the most basic things about the craft. Meanwhile I'm getting lots of 'Wow that's great!' comments and no real help or guidance. It has begun already to grate on me that I am providing my time and effort for free to HarperCollins to help them winnow their slush pile and all they're giving me in return is the chance - the very small chance - that one of their editors might one day look at my book.

So there you are. Maybe it's all rationalisation because 'Time and Tyde' didn't shoot to the top of the rankings and I've got a bad case of sour grapes. It's possible, but I feel more like it's resentment at having been 'used' by HarperCollins. I entered into Authonomy enthusiastically and was a good citizen of this social network but I found that to get anything out of the site, the site demands more and more of my time and effort. In the end, far more than I was prepared to give away.

Angry Robot

'Angry Robot' sounds sort of cute doesn't it? You can just see the little fella with its glass eyes popping and its jointed metal arms waving agitatedly. It makes me wonder whether this is really the image Harper Collins UK had in mind when they named their new sci-fi imprint.

I read in SF Scope today that Harper Collins' newly-appointed Publishing Director, Marc Gascoigne, will run the imprint as a stand-alone unit and that he's all fired up with enthusiasm and exciting ideas and intends to "build a new wave of authors in the genre". (Which made me smile, I have to say, imagining a production line where Angry Robot Authors are rolling off the conveyor belt, eyes popping and arms waving.)

More seriously, though, going on the few words of quoted comment from Mr. Gascoigne, his plan seems to be to ride on the back of "other areas of mass-media such as movies, television and computer games [which] have enjoyed massive popular success across a variety of SF and Fantasy subjects." Not surprisingly, then, he seems to want to target "hard-to-reach audiences like teenage boys." So, movies, games, TV and teenage boys, all mentioned in the same paragraph by Mr. Gascoigne. Looks like authors with shoot-em-up space operas, preferably with some yeuky horror sequences and a hot babe or two, should mail them off to Angry Robot asap.

When I was a teenage boy, I wasn't hard to reach at all. In fact, I went out hunting for sci-fi and I couldn't get enough. It was all grown-up stuff too - Ballard, Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Huxley, Vonnegut, and so on. Not a YA writer in sight in those days. Have teenage boys changed so much in a few decades? Or have marketers simply found a different kind of teenage boy to sell books to - the kind that used to kick footballs (and other teenage boys) rather than read but who now shoot simulated aliens (and simulated people) in simulated worlds?

Oh look, I'm getting all bitter and cynical again. I'm sure Angry Robot will be a fine imprint, publishing imaginative, high-quality writing by a new wave of intelligent and thoughtful writers. And, if it is, I wish it all the best.