PhD student Tom Lodge has a fixture of modern publishing in his sights. With the launch of TheFrontlist.com, he's hoping the slush pile could soon be consigned to history.
"One of the major problems with the slush pile is when you send off a manuscript that's not accepted you hear nothing about it until you get a brown envelope back through the post," he explains. "From the publisher's point of view there just isn't enough time to give a detailed critique of every manuscript that comes through the door."
TheFrontlist.com could change all that, harnessing the power of a virtual writers' collective to sift through submissions and find the best of the crop. Writers submit their work, critique the work of others and then wait to see how their work fares. And it's all free - or just about.
"At the end of every month the top reviewed work gets passed on to a senior editor," says Lodge - at the moment there's an "informal arrangement" with Picador's Jason Cooper.
Lodge is "very much interested in the process of critiquing", with a "cutting edge" system allowing members to make detailed notes on each submission before grading them according to criteria set by publishers and agents involved with the project.
"We really want to put people to work," continues Lodge. "We've created a structured process so that members' critiques are as constructive as possible." And here's where the money comes in: if you want to see what other members have written about your submission there's a £10 fee, otherwise there's nothing to pay at all.
It's the quality of the critical feedback provided by the site which will determine whether the site will stand or fall - no user will recommend it to their friends or come back for more if the comments are unhelpful. That and the quality of the submissions - no publisher will hang around for long if the "best" isn't up to much.
So far about 100 people have registered, and about 20 have submitted work. At the moment they're calling for "abstracts of completed fictional novels [sic]" - so what are you waiting for?
