As a poet I discovered years ago that open mic poetry readings were wonderful because they connected me to the audience. As you read you are given immediate feedback which is surely daunting for some, but it has helped me greatly. I am always discovering that I have more to learn about how people will react to my writing.
I bring this up because there's great potential to use technology to create this interaction. Publishers could facilitate greater interaction between author and audience. One of the things publishers can offer writers is an advance to cover expenses during the writing process. Maybe another is advance feedback.
Poetry is often short enough that it works in an open mic setup. Novels are far too long, but that's where putting early content on the net makes sense. We need to move away from this idea that the only thing the world sees from publishers is highly polished material. As long as its marked "draft" (in some way), then the more that's out there the better.
Some thoughts from the O'Reilly TOC:
"What's more important, the content or the people?"
"People don't want to change the end of the story, they want to interact with it."
"Storytelling hasn't been changed by technology - just the level of access."
"People are lonely. Create excuses for them to interact. Otherwise you just have traditional marketing."
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