Pamela Houston or Danielle Steele?

I shudder to think what sort of pablum might be unleased on an unwitting literary world by this contest:

They are billing it as the thinking person's American Idol, a search for the next big superstar but with literary, as opposed to pop celebrity, pretensions.

Touchstone, an imprint of the publishers Simon & Schuster, yesterday launched First Chapters, a competition designed to find writing talent through the internet. It is inviting unpublished authors to submit the first three chapters of a manuscript to the scrutiny of the voting public. The winner's book will be published and distributed by Touchstone and the author will enjoy a $5,000 (£2,575) cash prize.

[In the interests of full disclosure, I haven't read one page of the authors gratuitously name-dropped in the title.]