For emerging authors, getting the right eyes on their manuscript can be a huge challenge.
You know the story: You wrote something amazing, but your cold emails to literary agents go unanswered. What about a friend who works in book publishing to whom you can slip the manuscript? You don’t have one.
In order to fix this age-old problem, Bowker, a critical resource for the publishing community for more than 140 years, and Storywise have collaborated to introduce a platform where authors can get noticed by industry professionals who are looking for their specific type of content.
“Bowker is continuously searching for new products and services to help authors produce, publish, and market their books,” says Beat Barblan, Bowker’s general manager. “Storywise represents a logical extension of Bowker’s mission to make books easier to create, discover, evaluate, and experience.”
Storywise’s intuitive, accessible Discovery Network allows authors to easily attract interested agents and publishers. “We enhance author discovery through our proactive taste-matching and freehand search functionality,” explains Storywise CEO Gavin Marcus. Agents create book wish lists, specifying, among other criteria, their desired genres, types of characters, storylines, and plot structures. Authors create free book listings that include a book cover, a pitch, and metadata. If the criteria align, publishers and agents are notified by the platform and can easily reach out to the author requesting the manuscript.
Agents and publishers can be incredibly specific with their tastes on a large list of fiction and non-fiction genres. They can update their wish lists as often as they like. Currently in development is a discovery feature for diverse and debut authors, so agents and publishers can zero in on fresh talent and unique voices.
Too often, great authors fall to the bottom of the slush pile. The Storywise Discovery Network aims to stop this unfortunate reality. For authors, it eases the process of finding an agent or a publisher. For publishers, the AI-powered platform helps them zero in on new voices that might otherwise go unnoticed.
“We are passionate about storytelling Marcus says, “particularly that new, constantly overlooked authors get the opportunities they deserve to publish the best version of their stories.”
And, because a great book isn’t always a fit for a particular agent or publisher, the platform allows a publishing house or agency that passes on a promising project to submit it to the Storywise Discovery engine. The author then receives an invite link. This flags the book for other agents and publishers whose taste profiles better align with the work’s content, allowing them access to it.
Going forward, the platform will offer more customization tools that enable agents and publishers to further refine their wish lists and more easily connect to the right authors.
“We continually onboard publishers and agents which grows the platform and creates more opportunities for author matching,” explains Jeremy Esekow, chief product officer for Storywise. “We intend to add more customization to publisher settings which will allow them to refine their recommendations, particularly around nonfiction, literary fiction, author history and publisher readiness. On the author side, we’re building out a full hands-on AI assisted developmental editing tool to help authors improve their submissions
before they’re matched with publishers or agents.
Some have said that publishing a book can feel a bit like stuffing a note into a bottle and then hurling that bottle into the
sea. No longer.
To learn more about Storywise, visit: https://bowker.storywisenetwork.com/invited
