Authonomy or not to be...Is that really the question?

Well,.....maybe...

As a new author albeit one who has been writing for years (specifically on fiction since 2004) and is, as yet still unrepresented and unpublished, let me say this. Authonomy, while perhaps having moved the slush pile online has at least allowed authors such as myself an opportunity to expose new work to an audience beyond the ten second attention of a potential contributor to our own respective and daily increasing slush piles of rejection letters.

As an author, I am acutely aware that the discipline required to complete a manuscript requires more than the determination simply to sit down and write. It also requires encouragement and criticism, hopefully constructive but we take what we can get, chew several times and then swallow. If either that encouragement or criticism is available from others similarly engaged then no matter what personalities enter the equation both, as offered, are appreciated.

Yes, you are variably correct in your statement that much of what is on Authonomy is crap. Who would expect differently from any comparable venue but notwithstanding the implied objection, welcome to life. Much of that is crap too yet we persevere, (there again, at least partially due to encouragement and criticism).

I, for one, and as a contributing Authonomy author, congratulate Harper Collins for taking a pro-active stance amidst the morass of publishers vetting processes and as you have severally noted the site is relatively new. Perhaps with encouragement and criticism it will mature. For now, if any new author should learn that networking and popularity are requisite parts of any contemplated career in writing then that author may do well. After all, the United States is nothing if not a nation of whiskey drummers and bible salesmen. Our children grow up reveling in the fruits of marketing programs, slimy PR campaigns and hucksterism of every single sort and for everything they touch or see or want or emulate. If they are very lucky children, and I include myself in this category, they will learn a lesson from the hoopla and come to appreciate that everything worthwhile that they will ever achieve in life will ultimately depend on their ability to SELL, and first they must learn to sell themselves. Everything else literally follows from there.

In the interim, with day jobs beckoning we keep plugging away.

Yet, if I, as an author am limited to writing queries and waiting in a vacuum until Jesus comes back for a reply, then I will take the vagaries of Authonomy any day.

My best regards to you all.