I think you have a degree of truth on your side as well.

The reality though is that modest results are often the best that can be hoped for from self publishing.

I won’t deny that some people will strike gold through self publishing and create fortune doing so. But just as only a few will do so through traditional channels, it is a limited few who do so through self publishing.

Even now, an author who goes traditional has more chance of success and less risk of failure if only because publishing companies take most of the risk on themselves in the process!

Eoin

Great comment some of which I agree with!

Firstly I can see the viewpoint as regards being sold a dead duck and I think that is a perspective I need to spend some more thought on. I’m tempted to say that writers do need a certain degree of cynicism when it comes to publishers and vice versa, but that is not the way forward!

As to the role of Authonomy as a community of authors this is a noble idea that maybe HC should have pushed less (they after all were hardly going to benefit greatly from that). I agree too that it’s not just HC with an investment in the site and that needs to be considered!

Where I have to disagree is that its too far along in the process to be patting publishers on the back for this kind of move. Publishers have worked in a world of paper books for centuries, the real opportunities for digital products (and many of them are still ethereal right now) have only seen light for a decade (perhaps two).

Even where those opportunities have shone, they have failed to show where they might provide sufficient money to replace the revenue from paper books. Until that becomes some kind of a reality or until publishers decide to shed much of themselves (a terrible process that will much like the newspaper industry begin to happen soon enough) and pursue these digital opportunities, any effort that suggests they are vaguely aware of the potential seems a laudable case to me!

But then, I’m no revolutionary!
Eoin

Regarding your comment: “rejection would be a bitter a pill whether it was offered by a single unknown commissioning editor/editorial assistant or the System that ran Authonomy. The only beneficiary was likely to be HarperCollins. But then that was the goal.”

This is the kind of statement that makes writers cynical about publishers in the first place. It implies that people unhappy with Authonomy are upset because they were unsuccessful in getting published, not because they felt they were sold a concept that was different to what they got.

I work with thousands of authors at all different stages of professional development. Most writers serious about achieving professional success are all too aware of how difficult it is, of the changes occurring in publishing, of the increasing competition for shrinking publishing slots.

From what I’ve read of the comments and discussion around Authonomy, most users have found something of genuine value in their participation in the site. But I think HarperCollins failed to understand what that value was. Members have spoken of the supportive relationships they’ve developed with other authors, the value of getting critical feedback on works in process, the importance of focusing on craft and editing, the motivation and emotional boost they get from the encouragement of other writrs in the same boat as they are. That says more about the importance of social networks around communities of interest than it does about publishers using the web to acquire new titles.

The value of Authonomy isn’t in building a long-term following online and could never have been. The value isn’t in creating a budding readership for writers’ work. Authonomy is an online community of writers talking to other writers. It cannot provide any meaningful indicator of the potential market for a book any more than Project Greenlight tells a movie studio whether people will show up at cinemas to see a film.

I agree wtih you, I don’t believe there was any “underlying plan to exploit the system” but their offer to some Authonomy members to go down the POD route was a serious misstep. It demonstrated that they either didn’t understand or didn’t really care why authors were participating.

Everything in your summary of the state of publishing is correct. Times are tough. But it’s 2009 and I think we’re past the stage of patting publishers on the head for experimenting with something new online. Authonomy is an online community. Its success for HarperCollins depends on the social investment of its members. If the only one with time and money on the line was HarperCollins, then we can afford to be generous about a “noble experiment.” But HC’s experiment depends on writers’ investment of time and effort as well, and for this they owe members a better alignment between expectation and action.