Hello —

I’d like to announce a new website that will give authors a new avenue for getting reviewed.

A few months ago I was explaining to a friend why the publishing industry was having such a hard time adjusting to the new digital world. I told him that books are not like mp3s: you can’t just read an excerpt and click ‘buy.’ If you’re going to spend time with a book, you need to trust the person who told you that the book was worth spending time with. As I explained this, I started to see the crisis in publishing less as the result of the lag in e-reader adoption, and more as a result of dwindling review outlets. I thought, maybe readers just don’t know where to find trustworthy reviews any more.

Obviously this isn’t a problem for name-branded authors, but for new authors, who’ve written good books but don’t already have recognizable names, this is a real problem: how to get out there and get known in a market that favors brand names. While the industry focuses on e-readers as the future of publishing, though, I thought we could use crowdsourcing to solve the problem of finding the authors whose books would be read if readers could find them.

And so the newbooksite was born, as a place where authors review each other’s books in exchange for listings and reviews. Here’s how it works: you’re a published author—self-pub or press-pub, it doesn’t matter—with a listing already on Amazon. Sign up for the site, and upload your author profile, publication information, and the link to your Amazon page. Upload a synopsis and a ten page except from the book, and then a pdf of the entire manuscript—which will only be seen by your three reviewers. Review three other authors’ books yourself, and your listing goes live. We’ll publicize the site to draw readers, and we’ll process your sales for Amazon. Unlike display or review sites, you don’t give any money to the site. You buy in—the crowd of authors themselves create the content—by writing conscientious book reviews. With the descriptive review criteria we’ve devised—which evaluate the quality of writing, the nature of the audience, the book’s longevity and accessibility and also how compelling the concept is—and three reviews for each book, newbooksite.com stands to put book reviewing and promotion back in the hands of authors themselves.

I need to stress that we aren’t taking money from authors, and we’re not making any promises about the reviews you’ll receive. We’re just building the infrastructure where 100 or 1000 authors can each get three reviews. Hopefully for the community of authors as a whole, those reviews will be honest, maybe even a little tough: we’re linking authors’ reviews to their own books, so there’s a disincentive for unearned praises: the reviews should give readers a chance to know you outside of your book. With descriptive review criteria, as well, the newbooksite will give readers real tools for getting to know a book before they buy it.

The site is currently in technical development, and we anticipate a launch this winter. If you would like to submit your book—and your reviews—at no cost to yourself except the investment of some time—email us at submissions@newbooksite.com. With authors reviewing authors, we might be able to save books from the decline of the businesses that have published them.