Heard about Swoon?

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Cathy C

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I just spotted this article as the cover story in Publishers Weekly. Sounds sort of like the Harlequin one, but instead of a one-time contest, it's a business model. :(

I worry about how rights are going to be handled in things like this, even though it's through my own pub, Macmillan.

Anyone have insights about the "crowdsourced" concept?
 

veinglory

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Meh. I would worry about the presumed majority of authors who make their work public and end up with no deal and a harder time ever getting one for that title.
 

snc84

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I don't write YA, but I doubt I would want to put my novel online for free. To get a deal, so many readers would have to read your free novel there would be no one left to actually buy your published book. Maybe you just hope you get a following and can cash in on a second book. Good concept but I don't see it working very well
 

gingerwoman

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Could someone win one of these things without asking friends and family to vote?
 

Erica75

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I'll admit that my book is up on the site and has been since the beginning. Since I got mine in the first 24 hours they launched, I received an editorial letter based on the full ms as a reward, which is why I did it (this was my first full novel, had been queried to some mixed results, including everything from no-responses to full requests over a year or longer, and I shelved it with the exception of this). My only guess is that yes, there is a level of "popularity" that goes with it but maybe that's what Swoon was looking for - someone who can market well. As for me, I just posted it and left it and last time I looked (maybe a month ago) I had no votes, even though I received an extremely complimentary editorial letter before that. All I have heard from them aside from my letter is that reviewing is open until January 31st for them to choose their first ms to publish (although I've seen in another forum that someone was already offered a contract through them?? not sure if that was true or not).

So, anyway, that's my 2 cents on why I did it. . .(and yes, it was YA Romance, since that was brought up above).
 

Nimyth

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This is just one quote from them

that makes me wary
"The manuscripts achieving the highest ratings by readers and an in-house Swoon Reads editorial team will be published in paperback and e-book editions."

So even if you get the ratings from the readers the editorial team aka the 'company' can still 'shoot' the book down. Depending on how the company collects income from the site that the books are being read and downloaded from, they may have a vested interest in keeping the books free, thereby generating more hits to the site and more ad dollars for them.:Shrug:
Do not know, anything for certain just speculating. I used to web site design and I know some companies will shell out top dollar for ad placement on a site that is generating a lot of hits in a certain demographic. The publisher may end up making enough from ad placement, that they will have very little incentive to ever publish any of the books.
 

Beachgirl

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I dislike this whole concept, but that's JMO. Maybe it's a throwback to my school days when everything was a popularity contest and I was always on the losing side.
 

romancewriter

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I saw that too. I'm not really looking to jump on the bandwagon. I can't decide if this is a good idea or not. Seems like that can go either way. Although it does make me flash back to Harlequin contest when everyone is on Twitter begging everyone to vote for their story. Not something I enjoyed being constantly subjected to.
 
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