I like the idea of the site but I'm wondering if the motivations are a little off.
Who cares about mainstream media? We're living in a world of New Media with new rules of engagement. The market for eBooks should be people, not mainstream critics, and the authors that will be successful in this arena are the ones that can build a following and community themselves. A great example of this is
Jon Coulton, a musician that has been able to build a strong following on the internet and has began touring over the past year due to fan requests. There's a great interview with him about his business model on the
last TWiT episode. His main "marketing" has been his blog and his good music. From there, it's word of mouth from dedicated fans and now he's making a comfortable living doing what he loves.
In this day and age, all an author really needs to do is create good content and then connect with their readers in a meaningful way. I think the site you're looking at doing could be an amazing way to do that, if you keep in mind that the goal is author to reader connection and not a way to just promote authors to critics or "mainstream" press. I would be all over a site that allowed me to find new authors and then talk with them about past and upcoming works.
But that's just my opinion.
