The purpose of agents in the great publishing scheme of things is to read lots of books (or at least book ideas) and filter out the really good ones, which they then hawk around publishers. Because editors really don’t have time to read everything that comes in.

But what if you could post your shiny new novel to a web site, have loads of people read it, and get them to vote on whether it was worth editors looking at it? Well, that’s what authonomy.com does. And according to GalleyCat HarperCollins editors are reading the top-ranked books and even buying some of them.

I had a quick flick through the books looking for SF&F and I have to say that on the basis of the tag lines I wouldn’t read any of them. But then maybe the whole point is to find books that actually match the sort of idiot blubs publishers put on them.