The death of the slushpile—and the rise of new choices like self-published e-books
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on the death of the “slush pile”—the old publishing term for the stack of unsolicited manuscripts that would-be authors have submitted in the hope of being selected for publication. (So named because in the old old days, rather than being thrown away, the the waste paper would be rendered down to “slush” for making more paper out of.)
The slush pile has been a fixture of publishing for a long time—or at least it had been. In the “good old days”, they represented a potential “rags to riches” story: writer submits manuscript, publishers recognize its brilliance, and suddenly he’s at the top of the best-seller list.
Film at Eleven?
But according to the article, the last time major publisher Random House published from the slushpile was in 1991. Many publishers do not even look at un-agented unsolicited manuscripts anymore due to legal concerns or tight funds in today’s economy.
Now, slush is dead, or close to extinction. Film and television producers won’t read anything not certified by an agent because producers are afraid of being accused of stealing ideas and material. Most book publishers have stopped accepting book proposals that are not submitted by agents. Magazines say they can scarcely afford the manpower to cull through the piles looking for the Next Big Thing.
The article notes that “[t]he Web was supposed to be a great democratizer of media”, where anybody with the equipment to make a movie or write a blog could become a content producer—but instead, it has become one giant slush pile itself, that media producers are reluctant to touch with a ten-foot pole.
Other Options
Of course, even though the article does not mention it, slush is not dead everywhere. Baen has a slush conference on the Baen Bar, where writers can submit their work for critique by fellow Barflies and consideration by Baen staff. (Though last time I checked, the Baen staff in charge of that consideration were significantly behind due to the large volume of submissions.)
Baen also had a separate slushpile for submissions to the Jim Baen’s Universe magazine, though the magazine has since been cancelled.
But even as publishers have stopped regarding slush, it has also made self-publication as e-books or even print books much easier. Authors such as Henry Melton have taken to independent or self-publishing, and some are apparently even able to earn a decent living from it.
Others, such as John Scalzi, have posted novels for free on the web and subsequently been discovered by publishers—but this kind of success is very, very rare.
Getting Considered
The article suggests several ways for getting stories considered by publishers or movie studios—finding an agent and monetizing, getting your writing out there for people to see, entering contests, and so on—but it seems to me that even if you do everything right you are either going to have to rely on sheer dumb luck or make your own luck by self-publishing.
It would be nice to be able to say that e-books offer a way around this mess, but in the end they are just another medium for regular- or self-publishing: if your work gets accepted by a major publisher, they’ll probably put it out in e-book form—or else you can do it yourself if you self-publish.
January 18th, 2010 at 12:34 am
Small presses have also benefitted from major publishers’ refusal to consider over-the-transom manuscripts. In one of the genres I write in, all of the e-publishers will consider unsolicited manuscripts.
January 18th, 2010 at 6:52 am
I’d agree with the article’s assessment, with one caveat: At least those of us currently stuck in the web’s “slush pile” can still actively sell our e-books, whereas in the print world, those books weren’t even being seen. So I’d call this state an improvement over the old.
The rise of the big online e-bookstores (Amazon, B&N, etc) will cause even more of a “slush pile” effect, as more and more customers will probably come to get used to going through those outlets to buy their books, and will correspondingly spend less time seeking independent artists in other outlets. So indie authors will have to continue to work hard to get noticed in the market.
January 18th, 2010 at 9:48 am
Chris, you beat me to it. In one of my upcoming blog posts this week (already drafted) I cite this WSJ article. But I come at it from a different angle.
January 18th, 2010 at 10:37 am
A rebuttal to the WSJ’s article:
http://juno-books.com/blog/?p=878
The slush pile is certainly not dead in genre fiction. Almost all of the speculative fiction zines have active, “healthy” slush piles, as do some of the novel-length publishers.
January 18th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
The slush pile may in fact the novels you find on Lulu and Smashwords. One other thing. NY Media tends to write about things from a NY-centric perspective. I doubt that what happens at Random House or FSG are representative of publishing as a whole.
February 17th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Hello Chris…all is not lost.
I work for Slush Pile Reader, Press a publisher in San Francisco. And much like Authonomy, we allow authors to upload their manuscript so members can read and vote for their favorites; however, we go a step further with a promise-to-publish for the highest ranked manuscripts across all genres. All of this, with no charge to the author – ever.
As writer and author forums and online communities abound, so does the level and breadth of support and significance for writers and their craft. Fictionaut is another great resource, for short-story writers, with an elite group of writing communities embedded within the site to hone and sharpen one’s craft. The stereotype of what one expects to find online and in the slush pile, online and off, is vastly changing.
Many have been rescued from the slush pile, and many, many more have been lost within it. Just makes me wonder what we’re missing.
Thanks, Vincent Chandler