What is it About?
Originally, the site was exclusively for authors, but has recently been extended to included readers, agents, and publishers alike. If you sign on as an author, you need to have at least 10,000 words in order to upload. If you're a reader, all you need to do is create a profile, start backing books, and you're on your way.
How Does it Work?
There are two charts running - a book, and talent spotter chart. If you are a reader/talent spotter, your rating kicks in when you back your first book. Each user of the site has a virtual bookshelf with 5 places. When you find a book you like, you place it on your bookshelf. You only have 5 places, so choose carefully.
Of course you can back a 6th book later, but you would have to remove one of your original 5 in order to do so. As the books you've backed, move up the book chart, your rating goes up with them. If you become one of the top talent spotters, your vote (backing) for a book becomes worth more than someone's who is lower down the charts than you are.
The book chart is run in a similar way, the more backers a book has (more people have it on their bookshelves) the higher up the charts it goes. When it gets to the top five - which is called the editors desk - it gets scooped off and read by Harper Collins' editors.
How Do You Join?
If you love reading, or you're an unpublished writer, just click on the link and fill out the form. It's best to upload a picture (or an avatar) so that when you become one of the 5 top talent spotters, your picture can appear on the front page.
Now for the plug
I have a book there called Sunday's Child, if you sign up, please add it to your bookshelf and help me get it to the Editor's Desk. Here is the blurb:
"Anne didn't care that she lived in poverty (after all, the best hours of her young life were those spent in the food lines), because anything, anything was better than the horrendous abuse she suffered at home.
The daily blackouts, political brainwash, murders raging through her unstable country, and her hunger pains were no match for the darkness that lived within her soul - a soul sketched as a dot-to-dot picture of constant fear. Each day, each dot got her closer to the completion of an existence steadily spiralling downward to certain annihilation of everything she hoped her life could be.
Only her faith, her determination, and one young woman could help to keep her hope of escape alive. However, the struggle of keeping this dream afloat finally consumes one of them.
This true story is not only about pain, but about laughter, loyalty, and above all love, for it's love that ultimately triumphs in the wretched arena of torture, corruption, poverty and abandonment.
Darkness can become light."
Thank you for your support.
