Marcher Lord Select

This is an interesting new thrust in the publishing world. Marcher Lord Select by Jeff Gerke, the creator of Marcher Lord Press, is a contest to let readers judge and select a book to be published. It's interesting because I think it just might work. When Amazon.com tried something like this I was stunned by the horrid offerings of dreck and drudgery. Reading some of those submissions was just painful. Gerke knows his way around an editor's desk so I'm thinking that the final entrants will be genuinely worth reading.

Here's a bit from the news release:

"Marcher Lord Select is American Idol meets book acquisitions," says publisher Jeff Gerke. "We're presenting upwards of 40 completed manuscripts and letting 'the people' decide which one should be published."

Of course, I have nothing ready to submit even though "The Granite Strand" is over 16,000 words for a total of 47.7K in the saga so far. Right now I'm still content to keep them as individual short stories but I'm seeing possibilities to keep on going. Maybe next year there'll be an MLS II.