[Promotion] SmackFiction / Sparkabook

I am failing to glean what their specialty or purpose is by reading the details on the home page. It is some sort of catalogue? It "plugs" books for free?

The overly flashy style was an immediate concern of mine. In my, very jaded, very biased experience, flashy writing-related websites end up being less than reputable.

But what is their purpose? As it was not particularly obvious to me.

It's showcasing rights.

If someone wants their book to appear in a foreign edition, perhaps, or an audio format, they put its details up there and hope that someone comes along to buy those rights.

Agents sell rights for their author clients. They don't use a showcasing site like this because they have contacts, and co-agents who do the job for them.

I think it's going to fill up with self-published writers who want to sell foreign editions. But as there won't be many people registering who want to actually buy anything, just people who want to sell something, it'll all collapse in a heap before too long.

But then I am a mean and cynical woman.

The same folks who troll the U.S. Copyright Registration records to look for marks to scam are going to be showing up, methinks.

(I wonder if the site owners have thought of this? The "Terms of Service" http://www.sparkabook.com/TermsofService.aspx is a huge block-o-text that I'm not going to try to read right now.)

Old Hack said:

But then I am a mean and cynical woman.

Click to expand...

You say that like they're bad things. Cynical is good.

I remember getting promo for Sparkabook over a year ago, so it's not a new site. As Old Hack says, it seems to be mainly populated by self-published and small press writers...but not, apparently, by buyers.

- Victoria