It’s not very often that you hear a publishing house compare itself to “American Idol.”

But President Sue Heilbronner said that WEBook, a Bethesda-based online book publisher which launched its site publicly Wednesday, said the firm took a few cues from the reality show when figuring out its business model.

The company is designing itself to be a place where authors can get criticism on their work, collaborate with others, and have the possibility of getting published.

“We feel there will be an upstart publishing company that will be like iTunes was to music or PayPal was to commerce,” Heilbronner said. “And we want to be it.”

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The company plans to allow its community to vote on the best submitted works, and those books will get publishing contracts from WeBooks, which has deals to sell them through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble’s Web site. The firm allocates 5 percent of sales to contributors, who can register their work as solo projects or collaborative ones if they want to work with other authors.

WEBook’s goal is to publish six books this year and between 15 and 25 during 2009. It has published its first book, “Pandora”, written by 17 authors. In its trial phase, the site had 750 users and 60 works in progress.

Heilbronner would not disclose exact figures, but said the company raised between $1 million and $5 million in its first investment phase, led by Greylock Partners, and is pursuing a second round where it is aiming for $4 million to $8 million. The firm plans to make money through royalties and a number of online revenue options such as advertising; the site is now free to use.

New media analyst Denise Shiffman, author of “The Age of Engage,” was impressed with the site’s collaborative offerings, but skeptical of its royalty system.

“WEbook moves creation of a manuscript into the age of Web 2.0,” said Shiffman. “But the back-end publishing side of their business is no different than the antiquated and arcane established book publishing business. They choose books that are highly rated by the community, and then offer a minuscule royalty to the authors.”

melissa.frederick@dcexaminer.com