Authonomy Domine?

Authonomy emailed me recently to extol the virtues of their latest update. This is a fairly minor update : you can now leave messages for people, you can adjust font sizes via a control on the page (which you could do anyway via the Browser's own controls) and that sort of thing.

So I spent a bit of time nosing around. The entire manuscript of Hedge Witch is up there and, as previously reported, it has had a few good comments. But I have never really "got" Authonomy in the past. I find myself confused as to what I am actually supposed to do. YouWriteOn has its mechanistic system of trading reviews, which works pretty well. With Authonomy, it's all very organic. Books rise to the top of the charts by some mysterious process of osmosis so far as I can see. There is no rating system. It's just, I don't know, word of mouth and recommendations. Which mirrors how books get sold in real life, maybe, but doesn't feel very satisfactory. Am I supposed to review other books at random in the hope that mine will get noticed? Should I be reciprocating with those people who have commented on my book? I don't know - and this new version doesn't seem any clearer to me. After a few minutes of clicking around I gave up. It still isn't clear quite what I'm supposed to do.

So, I guess I'll leave Hedge Witch up there. Who knows, something may come of it. But I don't see much to be gained in "participating" in Authonomy. It seems time-consuming and unproductive. A great way to waste those valuable writing hours ...

No news from Pulp.Net about Seek Alternative Route. I guess they didn't take it, although it's not completely clear as they have this approach of not replying for rejected manuscripts. Which means you always have this nagging worry that they did reply and that the email just didn't get through. Still, time to submit elsewhere.