IPublish.com –- Time Warner Books' multimillion dollar foray into e-publishing -– goes live this week with an ambitious program that includes iWrite.com, iRead.com and iLearn.com.
Yes, the company is selling e-books by best-selling authors -– at least 50 new titles will be offered a month -- but that's not what has taken Time Warner a year to get up and running.
IPublish.com is a combination publishing house, bookstore, writing school, online writing community, talent search show and lecture hall all in one. And integrating all those elements into one site has taken the better part of a year, said iPublish General Manager Greg Voynow.
Unlike iUniverse.com or Xlibris.com, not everything iPublish.com receives will be for sale. But everything submitted will go through a process of being read and rated -- first by other authors also trying to get published -- and then if it makes the grade by iPublish editors.
"We are legitimately looking for new talent," Voynow said.
Indeed, if iPublish.com turns up just one Nora Roberts or John Grisham, the investment will have paid off.
Claire Zion, editorial director at iPublish.com, believes the talent is out there. One year ago she said as much as 20 percent of what is rejected by publishing companies deserves an audience.
But many literary agents feel the percentage of worthy yet rejected writing is much lower, and that deserving work does get published. They cite the lack of discoveries that have come out of e-publishing in general in the last two years.
But work is not always rejected because it's good or it's bad, Voynow said. Sometimes it's because the work is too short or too long or reaches a very specific niche market that's simply too small to warrant a print run.
"Now we can publish works that support different business models -– and in some cases that means we're going outside what we typically think of as a book," said Voynow.
