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[Display site] Bookner.com

CaoPaux

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I stumbled across this today: http://www.bookner.com/

It purports to be a site which "rates" your precious manuscript, then displays it for agents (who pay for access) to discover you. Not surprisingly, this has garnered much amusement from agents and authors alike. There's even an Anti-Bookner site: http://antibookner.blogspot.com/

Incredible.
 

victoriastrauss

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It's funny to me that the online manuscript display site concept, which was touted as the Great New Writers' Hope in the late 1990's and was pretty much a total bust, is now being revived as if it were an entirely new and revolutionary idea. In the past year or so I've run across at least a dozen display site startups. They seem to be completely unaware of the many similar efforts that came--and failed--before them.

- Victoria
 

roach

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I was waiting for someone to post something about Bookner here. Perhaps Mr. Gonzales can come on and defend his revolutionary site as he did over at Miss Snark's blog. As Victoria posted above, this is a concept that just won't float, ever. If it was a workable idea you'd see at least two or three big sites that had been around for years. Instead you see a dozen sites a year crop up and then sink into oblivion a year later.
 

James D. Macdonald

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victoriastrauss said:
It's funny to me that the online manuscript display site concept, which was touted as the Great New Writers' Hope in the late 1990's and was pretty much a total bust...

Heck with the late nineties. The first display site I ran into was in the early nineties, on GEnie.

It didn't work either.

Here's the deal with display sites: Editors don't bother with them.

Here's why some writers use them: Since their stories aren't really submitted anywhere, they aren't rejected anywhere.
 

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MadScientistMatt said:
Booknerguy's arguements with Miss Snark have been pretty entertaining. It seems that he doesn't quite get that if he wants to sell books to agents, annoying them is a bad idea.
It also seems he doesn't get that it's really, really obvious he doesn't know anything about publishing.

Someday, if he works very hard and manages to learn something, he may understand why he should be embarrassed by his rants.
 

roach

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Aconite said:
It also seems he doesn't get that it's really, really obvious he doesn't know anything about publishing.

Someday, if he works very hard and manages to learn something, he may understand why he should be embarrassed by his rants.

I got the impression from his comments that he was proud of his ignorance of the publishing industry. He seems to feel that being on the outside gives him some special insight into the flaws of the system. For him it seems that the rest of us poor schmucks are just too close, or too invested, into the system to see the genius of his "solution."

Of course in this case the emperor really is wearing clothes despite Mr. Gonzalez's cries to the contrary.
 

jgonzales

I'm not going to engage those who have already made up their minds in a meaningless argument. The comments here are far too asinine to be dignified with the term "criticism," anyway.

I would, however, like to state for the record, for the benefit of others who might stumble across this thread, that Bookner is not a display site; Bookner is a rating site. Thank you.
 

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Duh

CaoPaux said:
It purports to be a site which "rates" your precious manuscript, then displays it for agents (who pay for access) to discover you.

Agents...paying to discover me. The same agents who want IRC's or SASE's and 'don't waste my valuable time with phone calls' are going to fork over some money for an arbitrary "rating" system?

And I don't mean to sound critical of how agents work - their time is valuable and they're inundated with piles of unsolicited crap, as well as some gems, day in and day out.

But the thought of agents paying for this remarkable service?

I was going to be more diplomatic, but then I saw that jgonzales wasn't going to try to enlighten the masses about this wonderful breakthrough in promotion, so it seems some esteemed members have hit it pretty close to the mark. :Hammer:
 

victoriastrauss

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I have a couple of serious questions for Mr. Gonzales, if he's willing to answer them.

- How does Bookner go about publicizing itself to agents and editors, and ensuring that enough will visit the site to make participating worth the authors' while?

- Does Bookner screen the agents and editors who participate, to make sure they're part of reputable agencies and publishers?

- Victoria
 

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I thought that I read (in literature from the Maui Writer's Conference) that they offer a similar service... a place where you can pay to post your manuscript for agents to read.

Am I off base?
 

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Who told the bookner guy to use orange as the main color for his site? Ewww, my eyes hurt!
 

Aconite

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peyton67 said:
I thought that I read (in literature from the Maui Writer's Conference) that they offer a similar service... a place where you can pay to post your manuscript for agents to read.

Am I off base?
Talk to any agent, and they'll tell you that they have so many manuscripts sitting on their desks (and overflowing onto chairs and the floor and any other horizontal surface) that they can barely keep up. That being the case, why would agents go looking for more slush to read online? Especially if they have to pay for it?
 

eqb

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peyton67 said:
I thought that I read (in literature from the Maui Writer's Conference) that they offer a similar service... a place where you can pay to post your manuscript for agents to read. Am I off base?

Not at all. Bookner says he will charge the agents and editors instead of the writers, but it's still a display site. That alone would doom him to failure, but his attitude only makes things worse.
 

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jgonzales said:
I'm not going to engage those who have already made up their minds in a meaningless argument. The comments here are far too asinine to be dignified with the term "criticism," anyway.

I would, however, like to state for the record, for the benefit of others who might stumble across this thread, that Bookner is not a display site; Bookner is a rating site. Thank you.

So, what books that have been featured on your site can we find on shelves at our local bookstores?
 

HapiSofi

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The editorial grapevine is remarkably silent on the subject of Bookner and its mind-bogglingly stupendous wonderfulness ect ect ect.

Four reasons Bookner is doomed:

1. An author whose work is good enough to rise through a system like Bookner's is good enough to get noticed by an agent.

2. If there's one thing agents and editors are good at spotting, it's saleable books. There may be a few professionals who only think they're good at it (and those tend to get weeded out fast), but the fact remains that even the small number of bad ones think they're good at judging manuscripts. Obviously, neither sort is going to think it's a good idea to cede their judgement to a random bunch of wanna-be authors who are playing "HOT or NOT" with other people's manuscripts.

3. Bookner is only as good as their ratings. If they start out with a ragtag bunch of wanna-be authors who are justly unpublishable, and a bunch of manuscripts to match, nobody's going to be interested in the site's opinions or inventory. If agents and editors don't think the ore at Bookner is worth mining, there won't be a lot of sales originating at the site, more substantial authors won't be attracted to it, and Bookner's clientele will continue to be ragtag wanna-be authors with no insight and less talent.

4. Mr. Gonzalez, the proprietor of Bookner, is an idiot. According to his business plan, his projected paying customers are agents and editors; yet he complacently admits that he's a complete ignoramus about the publishing industry. That'll impress 'em. On top of that, many of the statements in his screeds on the Bookner website are not only false, but are grossly offensive to agents and editors.

Why should we go anywhere near this loser?
 

CaoPaux

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Uncle Jim, your post of 7/1 is lost. What news?
 

James D. Macdonald

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The news is that Bookner.com is down hard. The name is up for sale.

(The Anti-Bookner site is also neglected, and now consists of nothing but comment spam. I do wish that when people lost interest in their sites that they'd at least turn off their guestbooks and comment features.)