Publishing 2.0, anyone?

Interesting moves in publishing. Or are they gimmicks?

Reuters reports on Tough sell for writers at NY literary "speed-dating" (by Claudia Parsons):

If you think speed-dating is tough, try selling your book to an editor in three minutes.
That's what hundreds of aspiring authors were doing this week at a New York trade fair, and the odds were against them.

And in the New York Times, in Publisher to Let the Public Have a Vote on Book Projects, Motoko Rich covers another interesting concept from a site called Media Predict, which is..

..soliciting book proposals from agents and the public, and posting pages of them on the site. Traders, who are given $5,000 in fantasy cash, can buy shares based on their guess about whether a particular book proposal is likely to get a deal, or whether Touchstone Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will select it as a finalist in a contest called Project Publish. If either happens within a four-month period, the value of the shares go to $100 apiece; if not, the share price falls to zero.

What's your call?