HarperCollins UK is making another move into social networking: the News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)-owned publisher is launching a new MySpace-like online community it is calling Authonomy to connect “unpublished authors, hungry readers and publishing professionals”. The company says it will have its own talent scouts monitoring submissions and looking at what writing readers are rating, but it will also keep the site impartial and open to other readers/writers associated with competing publishers, writes Brand Republic. Authonomy is slated to launch early next year in the UK before being rolled out to other markets.

This looks like the second HarperCollins investment into its own social media sites. The publisher earlier this year started up Fifth Estate, a blog featuring authors and editors from its imprint Press Books. Other social net/literature crossovers have included efforts from Bebo, which ran a competition with Guardian Unlimited to find the best “nanotales,” as voted by its user community. The winners will be published in a book by Ziji Publishing.