Goodbye to the slush pile

Even when I worked in publishing back in nineties, the slush pile (i.e., that pile of unsolicited manuscripts sent in directly by authors and put aside while agented manuscripts were given priority) was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. (And yes, it literally is a “slush pile”: towering stacks of manuscripts all leaning and falling into one another until you can barely tell where one ends and the next one begins). In fact, as this Wall St. Journal article notes, the last time Random House found a book from the slush pile was in 1991.

These days, the article also notes, “most unsolicited material has gone unsolicited for good reason … Book publishers say it is now too expensive to pay employees to read slush that rarely is worthy of publication.” Yet back in the day, this was how authors were discovered — Philip Roth and Judith Guest among them — and even screenwriters could send a script directly to a studio (now, most studios won’t even accept emails due to concerns about being sued for plagiarism).

Now agents are the ones discovering new writers — but that doesn’t mean it’s easy for emerging writers to be discovered: finding an agent is “harder than ever to accomplish in the wake of agency consolidations and layoffs.”

While this may seem depressing, what always saves these tales of publishing woe are the exceptions, the success stories that are too few and far between but nevertheless give emerging writers just enough inspiration to keep going. One story is familiar by now: “In 2003, an unknown writer named Stephenie Meyer sent a letter to the Writers House agency asking [about] a 130,000-word manuscript about teenage vampires.” Normally this sort of query would’ve been tossed out — but assistant didn’t know that a typical YA book came in at 40,000 to 60,000 words, so she asked for the manuscript. And we all know how that turned out.

As always, there are rules in publishing that writers are wise to follow — but remember that it’s just as wise to break the rules on occasion. See the WSJ’s list of slush pile Dos and Don’ts for tips. But most of all, keep writing — becoming a better writer will help your chances — and keep submitting.