Can the first ten pages of a book and crowdsourcing become the next model of publishing?

Springwise is always a good source of innovative ideas and last week I've learned there about a very new innovative model of publishing, using a crowdsourcing strategy and based on ten pages.

Yes, just the first ten pages of the book are required according to the new website called Tenpages.com to determine whether it's worth publishing or not. And who will decide? the readers. But unlike similar ventures, like WEbook, here the readers don't vote only with their mouse, but also with their wallets.

So how does it work? Here's the description of the process from Springwise:

Aspiring writers register for free on TenPages and post the first 10 pages or more of their book. Those pages then become viewable to the site's prospective shareholders, who can buy up to 200 shares in any book for EUR 5 each; a widget is available to help them promote their favourites among their own social networks. The books that sell 2,000 shares during the four months they remain active on the site—garnering EUR 10,000—get put into production at one of TenPages' partner publishers, which include Pearson, The Workers Press and The House of Books. Authors get paid EUR 1,000 from the initial funds raised, while the remainder is held over for publishing and promoting the final book. The author then has eight months to write the tome with the help of a professional editor.

Tenpages.com is collaborating with three publishers to make it work: De Arbeiderspers, The House of Books and Pearson.

Will it work? will it become a new popular model of publishing? I guess that this model has couple of advantages that makes it attractive both for publishers and readers (publishers reduce their risk and readers have a chance to profit money and prestige, as their name ppear in the back of the published books they helped discover), but it has a chance to become a real alternative model only when we'll see couple of success stories or bestsellers that came out of it.

You're welcome to check out their website, but it's only in Dutch, so might need the services of Google translate to dive in.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Check out our green gift campaign!