Book publishing is in a state of crisis. Every year there are more authors, but not more publishers, edits, or chances to get recognized.

Publishing houses and literary agents are overwhelmed. They can't afford to spend more than a few seconds on each query, and stories don't get the attention they deserve. Helpful critiques to any writer are too time-consuming for the readers of slush to compose.

It is my belief that many highly talented writers and potential big sellers are lost because the barrier to traditional publishing is too high.

At the same time, the barrier to self-publishing has never been lower. Between print-on-demand (POD), e-books, Wattpad, and other social media, authors have little more to do than press a button to become "published."

Wattpad, Inkitt, and others offer a path to publishing that allows writes to be recognized if they can somehow attract enough attention, but this remains a high barrier to publishing--maybe even more difficult than traditional publishing in terms of commercial success.

For self-publishers, getting a story properly edited and finding a good cover remain a difficulty. Some authors can get help in this area from friends. Some pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for these services. Many books get published that are poorly edited and with unappealing cover art.

And even after all this time effort and money is spent on self-publishing a book, it means little if no one buys your book or reads your online posting. The barrier to get to the reader is still high.

Many authors turn to paid advertising. It is my belief that there is more money being made from authors than by authors  through the sale of advertising, editing services, writers' conferences, reviewing services and the like. 

Writers are stuck between a path that is too easy and a path that is too hard. What is needed, I believe, is something in the middle.

I invite you to imagine "The Author's Guild Bookstore" a magical place where most of the problems above are solved. How?

The idea of the AGB is that it is place with a moderate barrier to publishing. Each author in the guild must provide service to the guild in exchange for services received. Such services are, roughly, to be divided by seniority.

The AGB would provide a website, collaboratively run by a large number of authors, where readers could buy books or purchase unlimited read services with an assurance of quality in the product. For authors, it would be a place where they could either improve their craft or be recognized for their talent, depending on where they are in the path of growing as artists.

Unlike traditional publishing, the AGB would be able to scale its services with the size of the author community, because all its services would be provided (i.e. crowd-sourced) by the author community.

Senior Guild Member Duties:

(1) Read submissions to be published and sold through the AGB. A helpful critique is always provided for all submissions. Probably, this critique will not be long and detailed. Perhaps it only identifies a few small areas for improvement. The approval of three senior guild members would be required for any publication to pass.

(2) Editing services. Authors can benefit from each other's eye and, when everyone works together to share editing, the quality of all books can be improved.

(3) In payment for their work, senior guild members would get higher ranking in the display of their titles on the AGB site and/or priority in the editing and submission queues.

Junior Guild Member Duties:

(1) Junior members would also read submissions, but their critiques and verdicts would be held in a queue to be reviewed by senior members.

The above is only a sketch of how the AGB might work. I believe that if it were successfully implemented by someone and attracted even a moderate amount of attention, it would change the world of publishing forever.

The key idea here is that we need a barrier to publishing, like that provided by traditional publishers, but one that is not so high. Each submission should get significant attention. Furthermore, authors need critiques when they are rejected, so they can grow as writers. Such goals can be achieved through crowd-sourcing of an author community. The implementation details are not trivial, but achieving them would be worthwhile.

What do you all think? What can we do to make the AGB (or something like it) a reality?