Writing and You: Let’s Make This Personal

August. If you’re posh, it’s time to start hunting for grouse, and if you’re not, it’s time to start hunting for a place to hide from Other People’s Holiday Photos. And, of these, as we all secretly know, the most interesting ones are a) the technically brilliant ones but really b) the ones with you/your beloved in the picture.

And why should publishing be much different? Personalization, making an activity or object relevant to oneself, is key to determining value.

So, a good week for some of us: the BETA website authonomy.com, has finally come of age and brought in its rankings system — which is key to the whole thing. (Bit of disclosure/background: I’m part of the development team setting up the site to help a lot of unpublished and self-published writers and readers.)

With a lot of luck, authonomy will allow people to step into their own picture of the book world — and post up their manuscripts (budding authors) or lists of discovery (budding critics) for the public to read.

It’s early days yet because we’re still about 2-3 weeks away from removing invite code and allowing open access on the site. To be honest, we’re as interested as anyone to see what precisely people will make of this service and how far it can go to help them achieve their goals.

Gratifyingly, one of the digital tribe who really knows his stuff, James Long, has some generous, encouraging things to say over at The Digitalist and even wonders …. is Authonomy relevant to his Big Question of what brings people to a publisher’s website.

Now Authonomy is not really the kind of publisher’s website I have in mind for this question – usually I’m thinking of the catalogue and marketing site – but it presents such a clear answer. You come to Authonomy because you want to get published. And now, the mechanism for achieving that (or having a good stab at it) is in place.

I think the user group / market segment that Authonomy is serving is a bit different … to the group relevant to my Big Question; this is, in my mind, the middle ground: folks who are more than just readers (ain’t nothing wrong with being just a reader!) but not quite writers yet (in the sense of being published, especially within the publishing establishment).

Cheers for that. Agreed we definitely didn’t develop authonomy to market HC books so we’re not at the same party as a publisher’s marketing site…but now you’re mentioned it: about those “folks who are more than just readers”….

Them.

The people who inexplicably want to do more with books than just read them.

It’s this group of people who have dogged my (and probably your) thoughts ever since someone dad-danced up to us and mumbled “web 2.0″ in our ears, isn’t it? We’ve clearly all been wondering if today’s book lover might want an active role or (great word this) conversation, from tagging through to list-building to writing erudite reviews and recommendations…to attending a book group and now even dating (link). 2.0-tastic!
Do we know the answer yet? Hello – does anyone want to talk to us? to each other via us? Not sure.

It’s been said that authonomy is the obvious development of this 2.0 lark. I’m not sure if we could have ’schemed’ for it in such terms, but I’ll admit authonomy’s proposition is certainly more extreme and involved than asking book lovers to dedicate themselves to tinkling round the edges, listing, recommending and tagging heavily-protected and -copyrighted material for the sheer joy of it. Possibly more fun. Hopefully with a reward a lot more commensurate with the effort.

Well, authonomy’s fledgling BETA community are an amazing bunch of people. Committed, creative, enthusiastic, supportive, (and, my god, active), and I don’t know much about this ‘underground‘ but some of our members are certainly pretty leftfield.

I recently ran a little group interview/survey, ‘Writing and You’, to serve as something of a group photo before our community meets our public. (to anyone interested, I’ll post the full results on the authonomy blog soon.)

What exactly are these 1300+ people doing at authonomy for such a generous amount of time per day? Why the hell are barristers secretly staying up at 2am to recommend other people’s books to the community and policewomen sending encouragement to fellow crime afficiados?

Well it might come as no surprise to learn that the majority in our community are what marketeers would call heavy book readers and ‘consumers’, and care passionately about words and writing.

What might surprise you more is the authonomy community’s stated ambitions. Whilst half of us have eyes on the prize and, if we haven’t got one already, are going all out for a nicely rewarding publishing contract (and I really hope authonomy gets these people there) a healthy number of us (34%) are writing for other reasons — as a hobby, a creative enterprise, or simply to communicate. One member writes

The process of creating a piece of writing is utterly absorbing, and the best way to spend my time.

And according to the survey, some of our members, by nurturing their hobby, are creating stuff they’re pleased with, which in turn drives an ambition to take their creativity beyond a secret pasttime. This passion and drive is truly exciting.

And I’ll tell you what. People interested in books and publishing really like using words. If you’ve got access, take a look at the average comment on a book at authonomy and you’ll see what I mean. Rarely do we get a comment shorter than 100 words (some stretch for pages of involved and committed feedback).

If all that doesn’t get you feeling better about publishing-and-the-web’s long term prospects, you and I have different reasons for being here.

But, granted, whilst it’s not to be counted part of the recent tranche of publishers’ consumer websites, authonomy does not come into the world without its own ambitions. It’s not to sell books, print money or steal ‘book ideas’, or market HarperCollins existing ‘product’.

Ultimately, our own aim is to help authors get their work promoted or published, help all publishers recruit new talent, and help readers/critics discover at grassroots some exciting and eclectic new writing voices. Why?

It’s simply that we recognize that in a world where reading is in danger of becoming a minority sport, where government-funded reading campaigns are fast-adopting the same tone as a public health announcement, we have an interest in nurturing, fuelling and encouraging that passion for the written word. Even Apple’s Steve Jobs, the man with the power to put a copy of War and Peace into the pocket of most people in the developed world if he so wished, said books aren’t that big a deal. We so need to prove him wrong.

Obviously I‘d be lying to say, after the months of development work we’ve put in, it doesn’t feel absolutely fantastic to have a decent handful of people say they’re admiring what we doing. But my own (personal) opinion is that if authonomy site comes to anything, it’s not primarily to be seen as a point scored for HC, but as a point scored for reading and writing.

If you’re in the industry and you’d like to know how authonomy can help you, please do drop me an email some time — it’s my pet subject. I suspect if authonomy is functioning correctly and doing its community justice, it’ll be used as a tool by agents and publishers all over the shop to spot talent, to keep the passion alive — and to keep us all in the picture.