New roads to Publication

We've all heard of authors getting publishing contracts after spending their own money to self-publish, and authors who've been found the slush pile, and authors who've won contests like American Title from RT/Dorchester, but now there's another way.

Welcome to Media Predict a web-site which bills itself as an online game with very real consequences. They have something called Project Publish which is a book contest wtih Touchstone/Sime Schuster. Through Media Predict, Toughstone will select a book proposal from their site for future publication.

The whole idea is to get new ideas out there instead of the same old, same old. This includes not only publishing, but TV, movies and music as well. But it's the Project Publish that interests me. I must have been under a rock when this was first announced because I didn't know about it until I was reading SFA RWA's newsletter online and discovered that Josie Brown, an author who has published two books with Avon Trade, and has an agent was one of the authors being featured on the site.

The way Media Predict works is like the stock market. The projects have a share value and apparently when you sign up, you're given a certain amount of fake money to play with. You can buy stock in any project and that drives up the value of the book. The top 5 proposals will be finalists and from those 5, one grand prize winner will be chosen.

I was surprised that a published author like Josie Brown would need to use a site like this to get a book deal. From the except that is posted on the web-site it sounded interesting. A little different from the usual Mom battling demons books that have come out. This is Mom battling real spies, sort of if Sydney Bristow had married Michael Vaughn and they'd had kids and a car pool.

Sounds high concept to me, so I'm unsure as to why it hasn't been snapped up, and why her agent feels that this would be the way to go.

I have to confess that I'm thinking about submitting my YA proposal to the site, but then again, I have no agent nor have I been published, so the stakes would be higher for me.

I'll post if I decide to go ahead.

EKM