HOLLAND ? Four-month old Creative Byline, a match.com for writers and editors, has signed up its first three publishers, St. Martin’s Press, Tor Forge, and Dutton Children’s Books. Now the start-up is searching for more investors to better position the company as a player in the $500 million middle-man segment of the book publishing market.

Creative Byline also has doubled its stable of authors over the past two weeks, said founder and CEO Brad MacLean. He said the company has recruited hundreds of writers over a wide range of genres.

?We?re getting science fiction flowing in because of Tor Forge, which is a science fiction house,? he said. ?Dutton is attracting children?s writers. St. Martin?s Press does 300 fiction and non fiction titles a year, some young adult.

?This is terrific news for writers who want a more efficient way to have their manuscript seen by an editor at a respected house,? MacLean said. ?In the past, writers have had to wait for six to twelve months to hear back from an editor, and usually it was just a form response. Writers who have used Creative Byline to submit have been hearing back in a little over two weeks on average.?

Creative Byline is a screener and filtering service for publishers. The company doesn?t provide editorial services yet, but readers makes sure St. Martin?s Press, for instance, only sees adult fiction, and never a children?s picture book.

?What the user needs is paramount, and if we were going to improve the submissions process, we had to figure out what each use – writer, editor, publisher – needed and how to give it to them,? he said. ?The thing I?m most excited about is that Creative Byline really does give everyone the thing they told us they want most. Writers get access to editors and a timely response. Editors can control the flow of manuscripts. And publishers get a more cost-effective way of dealing with submissions.?

The company, acts as an agent of sorts, and guarantees that the writer will receive a timely response from editors, or the writer can submit again at no additional cost. Editors can easily update their electronic profiles as their needs change, while writers have up-to-the-minute information about what editors are looking for. Writers pay $19 for a novel submission package and $9 for a picture book submission package. Throughout the process, the writer retains control over where the manuscript is submitted.

MacLean, who was inspired to start the business after hearing his author wife talk about how inefficient the old submission process was, researched the problem and the industry for two years, soliciting input from publishers, editors, and writers before launching the business.

The company received a ?six-figure? seed round of funding last summer from undisclosed partners, but since the patent pending business process was honed by the former NuSoft Solutions and BBK Studio, one would think some of that money must have come from them. MacLean confirmed former NuSoft President Keith Brophy is on his board.

Brophy also was in the news last week when NuSoft was acquired by RCM Technologies Inc., a New Jersey-based technology solutions provider. See story at MITechNews.Com

For more information, click on CreativeByline.Com

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