[Submission Service] Pubmission

And beta on top of that.

So, agents are suppose to come to them to find your work? Sorry, I was under the impreshon that agents had enugh slush...

Another useless service...

It's for publishers, not agents.

When it opened its doors for writers last week, no publishers were signed up at all. Now there appear to be several, but all accept submissions direct from writers, making submitting via a submission service a bit redundant--especially if writers are expected to pay for membership.

I'm planning on blogging about Pubmission toward the end of the week.

- Victoria

Even still. Publisher or Agent. I thought they had enugh slush

I saw it on Twitter too when Carole Blake tweeted that agents do all of this already, only without upfront charges. She has a point.

Most agents and editors take email now anyway, or have online submission forms. So saying that it "digitizes" the submission process is archaic.

There was a Pubmission post on the WOW! Women on Writing blog yesterday. It does give a lot more details, but keep in mind that this is probably one of the posts that WOW! does when someone pays for their PR or blog tour services (nothing wrong with that per se, I've come across some interesting resources).

Pubmission has started awarding 6 "credits" just for signing up, so you could theoretically post something to test the waters. One thing I didn't like is that the list of publishers currently enrolled is not visible unless you register (and their signup form requires your PHONE #--no thank you!). Mr. Hoelscher does say that a lot of the pubs that are signed up are smaller and/or independent presses.

I could see this being a useful service for niche publishers, but I really can't picture any of the big ones paying $300 a year for the privilege of reading more slush--unless the submissions went through some sort of screening process. As it stands now, just because a writer can afford the service is no guarantee that their work will be better than anything else that comes over the transom.

They still have no publishers to which you couldn't submit on your own, sans agent--plus they have a "literary assessment service," which claims to offer a kind of go-between service between writers and agents/publishers, and is run by people with no evident professional writing or publishing experience (which may explain why they are deluded enough to imagine that a publisher or agent would pay them a finder's fee).

So I still fail to see the point of paying for this service--from the author's perspective, anyway.

- Victoria