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.

The Scary Thing Is...

I keep finding improvements to make. No, not self-improvements. I mean improvements to my novel, 'Time and Tyde'. But, on the other hand, maybe the two things are inextricably linked.

A little while ago, Justine Larbeliester started writing on her blog about all the crazy ways other writers have of going about the business of creating stories. Justine, of course, is the gold standard of sanity. We all accept that. And I'm obviously nuts because one of the strange things I do is rehearse scenes from my books as I fall asleep at night. Usually, I have a book (or two) in progress and the scenes I'm picturing are from the bit I'm going to write the next day. I find this incredibly useful as I can run through various permutations of action and dialogue and eliminate all the stupid ideas before I have to face the empty creen the next day, leaving something that just might be worth writing down.

Well, as I've mentioned once or twice already, I recently had a critique of 'Time and Tyde' - a book I had thought was finished - and since then, the ideas for improvements just keep coming.

For example, someone suggested bringing back a character I'd used early in the book, to help out with enlivening the middle. Now, this character (let's call her 'Gracie') existed to strengthen the main character's motive for making a really bad decision early on that sets up the rest of the story. She was a good character - lots of fun - but her purpose had been served. Yet, with what I was told was a slightly saggy mid-section (yes, I'm still talking about the book) I agreed it was a good idea to give my readers another glimpse of Gracie. So I did that and thought I'd made a slight improvement. But there was still something missing. The dull middle was a little brighter but it was still something that just had to be slogged through to get to the good bit - the dramatic conclusion.

And then, in one of my nocturnal rehearsals I suddenly saw what it was. The denoument wasn't set up properly, the characters just sort of slide into it. What I needed was someone to do something to precipitate all that trauma at the end. And there she was: Gracie. Not only the perfect person but now perfectly placed at the right point in the book. All I needed to do was add one little scene and then make sure all the subsequent scenes reflected it as necessary. It was a lovely moment of revelation and, let me tell you, it has made a huge improvement to structure of the book.

And the scary thing is, I had thought the book was as good as it could be. If there is one thing I learned from that Orbit/QWC retreat, and it is something I hope will stay with me for the rest of my writing career, it is this: I can be guilty of arrogance. Yes, I know you find that shocking but it is true. It turns out that even I can benefit from advice.

Trouble is, once you realise you're not infallible and that, however polished and shiny you think your latest book is, there are probably still things you can do to make significant improvements, how do you ever know when you're safe to put it aside and move on?

What I'm Working On

After the major effort I put into editing my sci-fi novel 'Time and Tyde' a couple of weeks ago, that project is now on hold while my wife, Christine, re-reads the book as it now stands and gives me her feedback. There was a recent discussion on the VISION writers' group about whether family and friends were or ever could be one's 'harshest critic'. I don't suppose that Christine is mine by a long chalk but I do trust her judgement completely. If she raises a concern, I take it very, very seriously. So I await her feedback with baited breath.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned, I took some advice elsewhere and sent out some of my short stories to various publications. It could easily be two months before I get all the rejection slips in from that round of submissions, so I have turned to another ongoing project to fill my time: my sci-fi comedy novel 'Cargo Cult'.

Writing 'Cargo Cult' is probably the most fun I've ever had with my hands on a keyboard. It is set in and around present-day Brisbane where the lives of several groups of people - a young reporter and her brother, a group of alien-worshipping hippies, the Queensland Police Service, a bunch of old folk on a gardening club outing, a vicious but intellectually challenged warlord from a nearby star system, and some exiled alien mobsters disguised as kangaroos - become horribly entangled when a Vinggan spaceship crash-lands on Earth and the religious zealots on board decide they must have been guided here by their god to convert the primitive humans. Sadly, they consult the Internet looking for suitable human forms to take and, being unable to tell us apart, all fourteen choose the most popular form they can find - that of Lindsay Loahan. But all is not as it seems. The Vinggan spaceship itself is a dangerous machine intelligence bent on Galactic conquest and hot on its tail is a powerful Agent of the Galactic government.

In short, it's a bit of a wild romp. I intended it to be a two-parter initially and finished Part 1 a couple of years ago. But when I sat down to write Part 2, I realised that the pages needed to bring a new reader up to speed with what had happened in Part 1 would seriously interrupt the flow of a very fast-paced story for those who had already read Part 1. And then I thought the sheer size of the lag between publishing Parts 1 and 2 would also be a terrible drag on the pace. So I took the decision to make Part 2 part of the same book and just kept the story rocketing along.

This has all been in abeyance for quite a while now - I interrupted it when the Orbit/QWC thing popped up (and thank goodness I did!) I had reached the part where all the weird and wonderful characters in the story are converging on a single spot for the big, final scene. Now I'm back, feeling like a spinster on speed, gathering in my fingers the tangled threads of this multitude of sub-plots to spin them into a single, satisfying yarn. Daunting, but I know I'm going to love it.

Of course, I see 'Cargo Cult' as a labour of love. The market for sci-fi comedy is even smaller than the market for sci-fi generally, so its chances of ever being published are vanishingly small. But then, I regard all of my writing as a personal pleasure rather than as a means to an end.

Home From The Wars

It can be a bruising experience, spending a week having your work criticised. However nice the critic is, however much you respect them, and however much they tie themselves in knots trying to say things as positively as possible, the message still comes through that your writing is less than perfect.

Which shouldn't really come as a surprise. If you're honest with yourself, you know what a struggle it was in that middle section. You know there are parts you really, really meant to go back and revise and then forgot about. You know that there were some days - in the nine months you took writing that book - when you had the flu, or you were struggling at work, or when your cat was dying. And, let's face it, some days you were just damned lazy and had no excuses at all.

So the publisher told me I'd let the pace sag in the middle of my book and I'd given away the ending in my prologue, and the author told me I wasn't polishing each and every last one of my 90,000 words as highly as I should be and some of my sentences weren't razor sharp the wa they need to be. So I sit and brood and think that's why I didn't get a contract right there and then. And it's a little humiliating and it's a little hurtful.

But you do this to yourself because, as much fun as it is to write books, it would be fun too to see them published - and to be paid for your work. And that means plaesing other people and writing to their standards. So the thing you have to listen to while you're copping all that criticism, is the praise that goes with it. The publisher also said some very flattering things about how I'd done some excellent writing in other parts of the book. The author pointed out passages she had particularly enjoyed. The fact of it is that I can write well and I do write well - I just need to do it more consistently and to be a bit more self-critical. And I need to go back and do those things that the flu, the cat, or just laziness left undone in the first draft.

I also learnt one very useful trick. The publisher told me to go back to my manuscript - on paper, not on the screen - and read it all the way through from start to finish in a single sitting. It seemed like an unnecessary waste of a good many hours when she told me but I did it and now I will always do it with each and every draft. It makes the structure of the book leap out at you and it clearly reveals the pace and quality of the various sections. In a way it is like taking the perspective of your readers - especially those readers like publishers, editors and agents who tend always to read this way - seeing the text as they would see it. You become aware of it as a finished object rather than as the fluid and changing set of ideas that constantly shape and re-shape themselves to your imagination. For the first time, you see your manuscript as a book.

So I'm back from my Orbit/QWC retreat, full of new enthusiasms and insights and ready to get to work on making my book better. Once I'm over the emotional trauma, that is.