Harper Collins just purchased three books straight from their online manuscript site, authonomy.com. The books were Miranda Dickinson's romantic book Coffee at Kowalski's, Steven Dunne's detective story The Reaper, and Lynne Barrett-Lee's real life story, Never Say Die. All three authors sold world rights as well.

The bustling social networking site counts 100,000 users worldwide who have uploaded 2000 manuscripts. On average, community members spend about 20 minutes reading and critiquing stories when they log on to the site.

Here's more from the release: "[W]ould-be writers submit unsolicited manuscripts to agents and publishers, hoping to be noticed. authonomy.com is an innovative way for book readers to endorse new talent and validate its commercial appeal as part of the acquisitions process; the manuscripts which are voted to the top by authonomy users are guaranteed to be read by a HarperCollins editor each month."