£24,000 a year may not be riches beyond your wildest dreams, but as a starter salary for writers it’s not too shabby. De Montfort Literature, a new publisher, makes the offer to writers “who pass its selection process, which includes an algorithm that is ‘designed to identify career novelists’, psychometric tests and interviews.” The Guardian has the story about this offer. Ten lucky writers will get a job, and presumably be asked to buckle down to work right away. If De Montfort’s psychometric testing has any real basis in reality, this could work. At the very least, entering your name in the contest might be seen as a willingness to work.

Jonathan De Montfort says “I have taken what I know about hedge fund management and applied it to literature”, which may raise a frisson of concern among the generality of potential hires.

I imagine that the books written will be work made for hire. As such the copyright will be owned by De Montfort, so their offer to give their authors 50% of the profits is quite generous. They also offer to “share copyright with an author” which means whatever it may mean. Of course, definition of profit is always a bit variable. But all in all this seems like a good idea. Will there be performance reviews in a year or two, maybe even with the possibility of a pay raise or the sack?