Planet Authonomy

This morning in between writing the latest chapter of my novel Fall of Empires and enjoying Jeremy Irons' superb performance in The Borgias I have been paying a visit to authonomy.com. This is one of the sites which I am using to promote The Battles are the Best Bits and if you are not familiar with it, it is run by the mainstream publisher Harper Collins as a platform for independant writers to showcase their work, obtain peer reviews and compete to get onto the hallowed ground of the editor's desk. This is a place which only a handful of the several thousand worthy efforts jostling for attention on the site will ever reach. As a non-fiction book I hold out no hopes that my effort will get anywhere near it. Given that most of the denizens of authonomy are there with the single minded purpose of achieving the holy grail of a Harper Collins review, it is not an obvious place to get sales either. Nevertheless the positive comments and encouragement from fellow members have made it a worthwhile exercise.
At times on authonomy you can smell the desperation in the air as those with books tantalisingly close to the top of the charts abandon all pride, reserve and shame in order to garner precious votes; mobbing every newcomer to the site with the persistance of competing geegaw salesmen in a tourist hotspot.
There is endless mutual backscratching, vote swapping and other shenannigans, but amidst all that are thousands of books to explore. It is a great place with something for everybody.
I like to trawl for undiscovered gems in the lower reaches of the authonomy jungle, in the hope of finding something new and interesting that I can give a boost to with a rating or a comment or maybe even the ultimate accolade of a shelving. You never know what you'll find next.
So if you are not familiar with authonomy check it out today and see what you discover. You can start on my page naturally! http://www.authonomy.com/books/45557/...