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June 5, 2007
Opening up the slush pile
Every author (or aspiring author) knows about the slush pile -- that stack of unread book manuscripts. Most manuscripts end up in the pile because there is not enough time or energy to read everything. Publishers concentrate on known writers or agent referrals. Now, authors may have the chance to have their works read by a larger group, with an increased possibility of acceptance. According to a story in the Economist (Place your bets), a new online method of picking books has emerged:
Gut instinct plays too large a part in the publishing industry's decisions, says Mark Gompertz, vice-president of Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, a publisher based in New York. So Touchstone is trying a new approach: a service concocted by Media Predict, a start-up based in New York. It uses the internet to obtain editorial feedback from a large number of volunteers in order to help executives decide which manuscripts should become books.
Media Predict hopes to do this using a virtual stockmarket for unpublished books, unsigned music acts and proposed television shows. It opened last week at mediapredict.com. Artists or their agents post samples of their work (a book chapter, say, or a television pilot). Traders armed with a free wad of virtual cash buy shares in the material they feel has the greatest potential. The idea is that as traders buy and sell shares in competing content, the cream will float to the top—where entertainment-industry bosses can skim it off. In September Touchstone plans to choose one or more of the top 50 book manuscripts on offer for publication.
Sounds like it might just work. On the other hand, are traders really going to be able to find that needle in the haystack or will they just go with the safe bets? After all, we know that attention is limited in real stock markets and Wall Street has its own herd mentality. Information overload continues to be a major factor in the I-Cubed Economy. These "wisdom of the crowd" mechanisms are useful in bringing more eyeballs to bear -- to collect and categorize information. But, as Nick Carr recently pointed out, they may not be as useful in developing new ideas and insight.
If publishing is about finding the next blockbuster, the stockmarket approach may work very well. But if finding and nurturing new talent is the goal, some other way of getting through that slush pile may be required.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at June 5, 2007 8:14 AM
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