Unbound

[Stephen Palmer]

This was trailed on BBC Breakfast and on Sky News today.

http://unbound.co.uk/

What d'you reckon? A first whiz through the site this morning suggests to me that the already-famous people are going to do far better than everyone else... but it is early days yet.

 

[Parson]

It is an interesting concept. It would seem to me that the pitch the author makes needs to be a bit more or you simply go on what you know of the author and the very slight summary. (Or did I miss something in the pitches?)

 

[Tirellan]

There is a world of difference between having a great idea and being able to deliver that idea as a great novel. 'Unbound' does not appear to take account of that for unpublished authors.

 

[David B]

An interesting concept. As you say, currently appears to favour celebrities. Target supporters vary from 405 to 2,719, making widely different hurdle rates. According to their FAQs, they’re ‘...only currently taking new author submissions via their agents...’ and the days left to garner support appear to be running out quite fast.Thanks for pointing the site out. I’ll watch developments.

 

[spider from mars]

Yeah, I guess atm it does seem to favour celebs. But, the virtue of that with a new venture is that it gets people aware. No slight intended, but if they'd started with purely unknown authors this would be a total non-starter. We bought Evil Machines (Terry Jones) and News From Gardenia (Robert Llewellyn) kinda on the names - but it made us notice the whole thing. We'll have to watch what else they do, but in these things part of the battle is just getting people to pay attention in the first place.

 

[TheImmaterial]

I remember seeing this on the news awhile back and was interested. However from what I can remember the website takes a huge chunk of any money and doesn't really offer anything you can't do with your own website.

From their site (my post count isn't high enough to post direct links yet):
"Unbound is both a funding platform and a publisher, fulfilling all the normal publishing functions but also splitting a book’s net profit 50/50 with the author."

So they take 50% of all money made but with no risk to themselves seeing as the print costs are paid for by donations and they guarantee themselves a market to sell to.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

http://www.unbound.co.uk/authors

Looks like it doesn't change much for unpublished writers at present so it isn't doing what it promises. Agents are still forming the middleman and readers aren't being given a genuine choice.