Voting begins today on Kindle Scout, Amazon’s new crowdsourced publishing program, letting readers preview and vote on which unpublished manuscripts they believe should be published.
Kindle Scout solicits authors to post their unpublished manuscripts on the Kindle Scout site and lets readers vote on the ones they believe are the best. Readers can vote for up to three books at a time. After thirty days, the Kindle Scout team will review reader votes to determine whether the book will be published by Kindle Press. If selected authors will receive a $1,500 advance, a five-year renewable publishing contract and a 50% e-book royalty rate.
Readers who voted for the manuscript will receive a copy of the book for free if Kindle Press decides to publish. Authors can post books at any time thoughout the year.
Russ Grandinetti, Senior v-p of Kindle, said “Amazon customers are passionate readers who have long influenced which books become breakout best sellers. With the launch of Kindle Scout, readers now have an even more direct say in what gets published and can get free books and discover new favorite authors in the process.”
