Friday, October 12, 2007

Harpercollins Launches Authonomy.com

Harpercollins UK has announced the launch of an author community site that will attempt to mimic the success that MySpace (and others) have had in the development of new music. Interestingly, the parent of both Myspace and Harpercollins is Newscorp and leveraging Myspace across the Newscorp businesses was something observers were expecting when the deal was consummated last year. No matter.

Authonomy will be expanded globally and will seek to develop the type of social networking framework that has been the hallmark of myspace, bebo, facebook and others. That type of success is hard to bottle so it remains to be seen whether Harpercollins can create the same type of social interest around writing and authorship. Users of the site will be encouraged to upload their own writings, comment on others and generally support the efforts of their fellow Authonomists.

As talent is spotted, Harpercollins will consider the works for general publication. No guarantees of course. Thus far, the launch hasn't really generated too much excitement.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I heard about this site on radio 4 this afternoon. I think it is an excellent idea. I have sent my email address and am looking forward to submitting some of my work when the site is up and running.

joemoe said...

I heard about 'authonomy' on radio 4 this afternoon and think it an excellent idea. Even if it doesn't lead to publication, at least you will have the satisfaction of having your work read and possibly receiving some feedback.

Anonymous said...

Great! This should offer authors some authentic autonomy.