It used to be that a fascinating subject, in-depth research, a talented author and editor and lots of advance p.r. were what made up a best-seller. Now Media Predict is counting on the public to place their bets, in dollars and cents, on what would make a top-seller, and publisher Simon & Schuster is counting on the results.
Via Project Publish, Touchstone Books, an S&S imprint, will be the first major publisher to put this market-based method for evaluating media content to the test. In October, a team of editors, including Touchstone publisher Mark Gompertz, will evaluate the 50 top scoring book proposals on Media Predict. They’ll select five book proposals as Project Publish finalists, and eventually one grand prize winner.
The finalists will be announced the week of September 17, 2007. International Herald Tribune has the story.
publishers, be my everything
Let’s just call authors, intellectuals and artists what they are, customer service providers. And we all know the customer must always be right. How revolutionary. This publisher’s freed us from novelists’ tyrannical hold on their novel’s content. Now, we’re all grand patrons, just like the Medicis! Jeeves, tell me a story. About a blond. With a red car and leg warmers.
And librarians never see people who don’t know what information or book they want. Never!