Time Warner Books' EBook Experiment

On April 30th, Time Warner Books launched iPublish.com, an experimental new method of locating the few gems from among the many thousands of books manuscripts that their editors receive each year. The idea behind iPublish.com is to tap "the power of the Internet to discover new writing talent... [by building an] online community where aspiring writers can submit their works for considering for publication" (from May 1st press release). 

At the heart of iPublish is iWrite. Here authors can submit manuscripts for consideration in exchange for reading and rating three works by other authors. An except of the manuscript (between 2,500 and 4,000 words) is posted publicly on the iWrite website for comment and rating (0 to 5 stars) by anyone. The works that receive the highest rating are brought to the attention of Time Warner Books' editing staff, who read the manuscript in its entirety. If the editors find the work to be worthy of publication, then the work is published either as an ebook or, if it is longer than 100 pages, a print-on-demand title. The work will only be published in print if the digital copy receives high sales and/or a favorable review. At present, there are over a thousand manuscript excepts posted at iWrite.

Time Warner Books' entire corpus of ebooks, both from established and newly discovered authors, is showcased at iRead, another section of iPublish. Titles are available in the Microsoft, Palm, Gemstar and Adobe formats, with free preview samples available. Most titles are priced around $5-$8 and are also available from other online ebook distributors, such as Amazon.com and BN.com.

The third and final section of iPublish is iLearn. Through lectures, live events, self-study and a message board, iLearn was created to be a "place for working writers to learn and grow" (from website). For instance, on June28th at 7pm, best-selling author Brad Meltzer will host an online chat regarding the importance of research in his fiction works. The self-study area includes guides to "Rights and Contracts" and "The Creative Process." 

Thus far, Time Warner Books has not announced the publication of any new works that were discovered through the iPublish process.