One of the more interesting new companies I came across at Tomorrow’s Web on Saturday was eNovella (@eNovella), a new content sharing platform that gives aspiring authors a place to have their work commented on and rated by others. It also offers the promise of publication, presumably on-demand, if their work is sufficiently highly rated.
I’ve never been that keen on the idea of crowdsourcing qualitative opinion; I suppose I lean toward Andrew Keen on that one. I worry that the service will descend into a ratings site for extended jokes, rather than quality poetry (and that appears to be happening already), because that’s what people tend to rate higher.
But if eNovella can make it work – and make a bit of money from selling bound copies of the best stuff – why not? There’s also an iPod touch up for grabs for the first author to get 100 “favourites”. And if that doesn’t get people writing seriously, I don’t know what will.