Work expands to fit space available...

[kirian]

I have wanted to do a decent length post for ages, but just haven't had the time. I still don't, but as my stress levels were getting to a chest constricting point, I thought 5 mins out wouldn't hurt.

Lots going on at the moment, I want to tell you all about:
Work stuff
Money stuff
Writing stuff
Life balance stuff

And lots of other random things. Until I

Comments

[bateleur]

Re: Authonomy - Looks like a good idea. The big question mark is whether there will be enough readers to make it work. Because the concept is basically "sort out our slush pile for us and tell us what's good". Which works fine if there are thousands of people doing that unpaid. But if the only people who come to the site are aspiring writers and everyone's posting extracts and not reading and rating stuff (fairly) then the site won't be much use.

[bateleur]

A quick bit of research reveals that this has sort of been tried before. See this article in the Guardian and (particularly) the comment below from the Arts Council dude.

[kirian]

Hmm, very interesting.... thanks for the link.

[secretrebel]

I dunno. It's going to depend on the quality of the reviewers to weed out the gold from the dross. And I wonder if a really top-quality reviewer would have the time. Also, I suspect HC haven't thought much about social network dynamics and the Cassie Claire effect. Popularity among your friends =/= great talent.

Thanks for the link though, always good to see what's new and shiny in the world of publishing.

[undyingking]

Seems to me more in the "can't do any harm I suppose" category... I don't think fiction writing is particularly well suited to this sort of low-level crowdsourcing, if what you're looking for is to identify publishability.

[lathany]

I find the score system a bit concerning - the pick the most popular books to increase your worth as a reviewer. Because the trick appears to be to find the five most popular books, wait a while for your list to expand and then push the book you want rated (although I guess you can hardly push your own?).

That said, I guess every popularity chart has its problems.