Did I blog this before? Oh well. Fibonacci's Child sits at #10 in Harper Collins' slush-pile (Authonomy). I wonder how it got ranked so highly? I have no idea. From the publisher's point of view there are perhaps 6000 manuscripts which they peruse at their leisure. Leisure, is not strictly the right word. When it's raining of a lunchtime and they cannot go out to play, an editor may click randomly through the slush whilst munching cheese and onion crisps, as an apple and a bottle of mineral water look on.

 In Authonomy game, the game where you attain a top 5 ranking and Harper Collins politely tell you, your book is shite and they will not publish it. In that game, there are only 500 books, even so #10 is pretty good me thinks.

 Why do Harper Collins always say the books are shite? I hear you ask. Well, I answer. There are two recognised methods, of reaching the top 5.

Method 1: Read, vote for, and comment on, every active book on the site. This method is preferred by ex-school teachers who have developed a certain skill from marking 20 students essays per hour.

 Method 2: Be nice on the forum. Hopefully, when it's your 'turn', somebody will announce that you're a 'jolly good chap' and henceforth are deserving to be voted in this month.

 The methods can be summarised as 1) Hard-working, and 2) Popular. The main problem with both of these systems is none of them take into account whether or not the book is any good. The lack of quality is a detail that Harper Collins are concerned about. Silly buggers!

Anyway, the gems I've found are kept here.

 


Comments

Lilian Kendrick

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:46:54

Do I detect a note of cynicism here? Strange, this is the first time I've looked at your website - it's interesting. I have one which is crap - but I'm gonna fix it soon.
I'll never make top 5 on Autho. Too easily distracted and outside of the most popular circle. Do I care ? Not much - like to see you do it though!

 



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