WEbook Reloaded: A Fresh Start

Early 2012 I signed up for this website, WEbook. It's a sort-of social network for authors and agents and a ongoing writing contest. I was a silent member for a while, using it to look around and research agents, etc. Then I decided to try their page-to-fame and agent inbox features.

I submitted the first page of my novel and I also tried querying a few agents.  The WEbook system worked well. My one page submission got feedback and ratings from randomly assigned users.  I rated some first pages.  Some of the stuff on there was really good.  I heard back from the agents I queried, and some gave insightful feedback as to why they were rejecting me.

What I learned from this process is that my book wasn't ready.  Back to the editing and revising board. Still, I'd check back every once in a while to check on my page-to-fame (my ratings were middle of the road).

Then, one day, I went to check and the site was down--no explanations.  And I though, hey, I know I wasn't going to move up with this page-to-fame thing, but I paid my 4 bucks to be in this contest! I want to know what's going on.  I checked back periodically and followed @WEbook on twitter.  And all of a sudden there was a message on the sight that there was new ownership.  I was looking forward to reconnecting with the WEbook network.

Imagine my disappointment when the site relaunched and my log-in credentials were not recognized. I emailed their support team a received a prompt reply saying that my details from 2012 may have been lost in the upheaval. They were very apologetic about the whole thing and let me bypass payment when submitting my new first page. I can consider this a fresh start.  This first page of my novel is way better than that old one anyway.