As illuminated by February's e-book pricing battle between Amazon.com and book publisher Macmillan, the future of the book industry is moving away from traditional brick-and-mortar stores and into Internet-based sellers. This may seem fairly obvious - today, nearly everything is going digital - however, it is interesting to note that contemporary writers are likewise entering the online realm.
There are a plethora of online writing groups, ranging from general help forums to closed websites dedicated especially to, say, young adult romance novelists. Although these online forums represent a grassroots movement to connect with other like-minded writers around the world, publishers today are taking the idea a step further.
Enter HarperCollin's authonomy, which describes itself as a "brand new community site for writers, readers and publishers." The concept is simple: Members post their novels to be critiqued and rated by other members. Also lurking on the site are HarperCollins editors who evaluate the top five books - as voted by the authonomy community - every month. Once in a blue moon, they offer a lucky authonomy member a book contract.
Some propose that authonomy was motivated in part by the marketing success of the yearly Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award - ABNA, for short - which "discovers" and publishes the debut book of a first-time author every year. ABNA has just recently released the list of 100 semifinalists, which will be judged by publisher Penguin Books.
ABNA is a great marketing tool, especially considering that the number of people who identify themselves as aspiring writers is growing exponentially. With the advent of the Internet, anyone can "publish" and share their work with the world, thus marking a strange shift in demographics. Today's "readers" are not content to merely enjoy the works of the published authors. They're the aspiring writers of tomorrow.
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