Amid news from Amazon that another domino has fallen in our inevitable (yes… inevitable) conversion to a primarily e-book reading society, there is one relic of the print publishing process that could very well end up falling by the wayside: the slush pile.
Much maligned, much feared, much sneered at, the slush pile is a repository of hopes and dreams for the authors who populate it, and a Herculean and Sisyphean task for those charged with making the pile go away to make way for the deluge still to come. The slush is full of half-baked ideas, the truly out-there, the very occasional undiscovered gems, but mostly good-solid efforts by perfectly respectable writers, who are up against simple math that simply isn’t in their favor: maybe one in a thousand, if that, make it from slush pile to publication with a major publisher, and the odds are getting steeper by the day.
And yet with the transition to e-books, the slush pile could very well be one of the print-era relics swept out in the digital tide. When publishing one’s book is as simple as uploading a document to an e-bookstore, who needs someone to sort through all those manuscripts to decide which ones should be published?
Writing in Salon, Laura Miller wrote a cautionary article about the literary consequences if everyone can easily become a published author, and she had harsh words about the slush pile, while respecting its importance:
You’ve either experienced slush or you haven’t, and the difference is not trivial. People who have never had the job of reading through the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts sent to anyone even remotely connected with publishing typically have no inkling of two awful facts: 1) just how much slush is out there, and 2) how really, really, really, really terrible the vast majority of it is. Civilians who kvetch about the bad writing of Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer or any other hugely popular but critically disdained novelist can talk as much trash as they want about the supposedly low standards of traditional publishing. They haven’t seen the vast majority of what didn’t get published — and believe me, if you have, it’s enough to make your blood run cold, thinking about that stuff being introduced into the general population.
Needless to say I don’t share Miller’s fear about releasing the slush into the wild for the reading public to sort out, but I definitely agree with her on one count: the world is divided between those who have read slush and those who haven’t.
If you haven’t been exposed to the constant fire hose of submissions, if you haven’t had to spend afternoons rendering instant value judgments on short summaries of magnum opuses, and developed the ability to instantly tell good writing from bad: well, you’re missing out.
If you’re a writer, in my opinion there’s no better education than reading slush.
Reading slush, of all kinds, trains you to spot what works and what doesn’t. It forces you to spot clues that will instantly tip you off to whether a manuscript is working or not, and even better/worse, you’ll start spotting them in your own writing. And when a terrifically written book comes along and sucks you in you’ll appreciate it that much more, knowing just how rare they are.
Maybe most importantly: reading slush reminds you that publishing is a business.
While I don’t know anyone who thinks any slush pile-based sorting process is perfect and surely there are gems lost along the way, any book that makes it through represents the collective seal of approval of quite a few people in the publishing chain.
At least…… it does now. Soon, we could very well have a world where the slush pile is sourced out to readers themselves, who will likely turn to tastemakers and trusted publishers and brands to find the books they are interested in reading.
I by no means think the slush pile will go away entirely – anywhere there’s a bottleneck and a tastemaker there will be slush – but it could lose its primacy in the author’s (and agent’s) life. Instead of the agents being the first line of defense, slush will become more diffuse among different and varied people, and will be less of the place where a book’s ultimate fate is decided.
And if you’re a writer, I say: read it while you can.
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The Invisible Writer says
So what will happen? If every slush-pile rejection will be listed as an e-book, what will be the filter for readers to find the next must-read?
Sara Samarasinghe says
Interesting article! Thank you for posting this!
I agree with the mention of Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer … so much of that type of criticism has been going around, and it definitely connects to this!
Thanks!
Nathan Bransford says
invisible writer-
That world already exists – there are hundreds of thousands of books out there. So how did you find the book you're reading now?
Sara Samarasinghe says
Invisible Writer – I think it's just a matter of chance and popularity. Also, self-publishing has made that world real on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites.
IsaiahC says
I'm totally down with throwing on my boots and slumming it in the slush pile for a day or so, to learn what crap looks like. But…how? Any good tips on how to find really crappy writing? (And no, pasting my blog address back as a reply is not well received humor)
Steven Brandt says
You advocate reading slush–but how can we do it? I'm part of a critique group, but I don't think that counts.
Katie Alender says
The gatekeeping process may have to reinvent itself, but it will never cease to exist. After what may be an initial onslaught, readers will go looking for people to sift through the waves of material for them; these people will put their names on the books they're willing to stand for and be editors. Quickly, the editors will be inundated with material, and they'll want gatekeepers for themselves, who will be agents. And so it goes. With flexibility to allow for more maverick approaches. Purple cows or whatever. But it's like they say–when all the cows are purple, there's nothing so great about being a purple cow.
Katie Alender says
Sentence fragments. Also the wave of the future.
Nathan Bransford says
Ways of finding slush to read:
– Interning or reading for an agency or publisher (CBSF isn't hiring, but there are always positions available).
– Volunteering for or running a literary journal or online magazine.
– Participating in and offering feedback for an online critique site like Authonomy.
– Offering feedback for other writers in discussion forums like the ones on this site.
Masonian says
Yowzah! I'd better sign on to read some slush… er… well. Maybe I'll just stick to freelance editing, or, pre-slush.
It will be interesting to see what other collateral damage there is in the wake of this present transition.
Though in the short-story niche slush sure doesn't seem to be going away.
Anonymous says
Seriously, the idea that readers will in the future want to spend their time sorting through the slush pile for themselves seems crazy.
An increasingly connected world means too much information and not enough time, and the only way to navigate it is filters. Whether those are agents and publishers or something else, someone out there is going to be doing the equivalent of reading the slush pile and sorting out what's worthwhile from what isn't. The fact that a chunk of that slush pile is already "published" won't change that.
Nathan Bransford says
anon-
I agree. I think the slush will just be more diffuse instead of sitting on an agent's desk.
sex scenes at starbucks, says
I cannot agree more on the slushpile. After 5 years of constant submissions to my magazine, I've read literally hundreds of short stories and I'd be hard pressed to find anything as effective as analyzing slush for training a writer. Isaiah, I'd recommend reading for a year. That way you get a full grasp of how odd trends come across your desk, what works and what doesn't, and the true nature of the slush reader: exhausted, jaded, and yet still panning for gold. Because seriously, nothing makes an editor's heart race like finding that gem after a couple of weeks of reading less shiny pieces of prose.
I also do a lot of critting, which isn't quite the same thing. In critique, you're trying to make the piece better. With editing it's a pass/fail grade.
Hillary Jacques says
Great post, Nathan!
I know for a fact that my own queries got better after critiquing on a couple of sites, as a result of reading both good and bad examples, in addition to feedback.
MissMystra says
Call me crazy, but this is actually one of the reasons I want to get a publishing internship. I would love to go through the slush pile in search of worthwhile writing. I'm sure I'd tire of it eventually, but I'd love to give it a shot! Unfortunately, I've applied for two years in a row for internships and it's just a really competitive field.
Great post, though!
The Invisible Writer says
I find books mainly via WOM, but that's from people I trust looking through the 250,000 new books a year. If there are 10,000,000 new books a year that mainly should have stayed on someone's home computer . . . ?
I agree with Katie that some new gatekeeping system will come into play. Some kind of reviewer recommendation system will invent itself.
Anonymous says
How is this going to impact the English Language?
Stu Pitt says
Not sure what is meant by gatekeepers and tastemakers, but I hope quality critics give ebooks a shot.
If Alan Cheuse or Michael Dirda says an ebook is good I'll buy it. Until then I'll keep buying the normal books they praise.
BuffySquirrel says
Åcting as a slush reader whenever I want to buy a book is not a prospect I relish, given I already spend much of my days reading slush for a lit mag. That's given me a pretty good idea of how much dross there is whose authors nonetheless consider it worthy of publication. Slush-reading is horrendously time-consuming, even though you do get good at first-paragraph and even first-line rejections, and it's definitely not something I'd do in pursuit of fun.
I find it hard enough now to find a decent book amongst all those published every year. Hence the book I'm reading now is a trashy novel from my dad's bookshelf; I felt like some brain candy and I knew this particular author wouldn't disappoint.
More and more, though, I'm reading non-fiction. Even if the writing isn't always stellar, at least I can choose a book on the basis of subject matter in which I'm interested. This move away from fiction is, for me at least, almost entirely motivated by the difficulty of finding a novel that's worth the £7.99 to £8.99 I'll be expected to pay for it, and/or the time I spend reading it before I give up.
I confess I'm also getting very tired of being told how I'll buy and/or read books in the future. I'm the customer! Surely I should get a say?
Tina Hunter says
There are lots of small presses out there that are looking for volunteer slush pile readers. You just have to look for the opportunities.
I, for one, have read slush and it was a truly eye opening experience…
But I think I have to disagree with you Nathan. There will always be people who want to act as a filter for others (in my eyes thats a good thing) and for these people slush is inevitable. Now, that doesn't stop the rejected folks from self publishing but perhaps we will all start looking at the publishers name as a means of determining quality.
Nathan Bransford says
buffysquirrel-
Vote with your dollars, definitely. But again, I think people are underestimating the extent to which this world-of-slush is already here, particularly if you buy books online. There is already, literally, a million books to choose from and we manage to find the ones we want.
Carl Grimsman says
I feel like I am getting exposure to slush — what a harsh word — reading the torrent of first pages and queries on your forum's Town Hall, from people hoping to get picked for a Monday critique. A good learning experience, for sure. Over 300 pages and 125 queries so far, that's, what, two day's email for you?
D.J. Morel says
I don't understand why so many seem to think that the average reader will be buried inslush. Readers only ever look at books that they've heard about, that's the most important step. Not hearing about a book eliminates more than 99% of what's traditionally published today for all but the most avid readers (1% = about 2,800 books).
If the number of books that are published grows, the number we hear about isn't going to change much. It's already at capacity, and even though I might consider a few hundred books before picking up the next one, I never have a problem finding something good to read. Just the opposite. There are tons of fantastic books out there, way too little time to read them.
That kind of begs the question as to why anyone would want to write a book, when there is already so much brilliant material written… but that's a whole other ball of wax.
Nathan Bransford says
carl-
Yeah, two days sounds about right.
Mark Terry says
Couple thoughts.
1. Stephen King's "Carrie" was pulled out of the slush.
2. I haven't read slush, but I've read a number of manuscripts or partials as part of mentoring programs or for friends or friends of friends. God knows there's some bad–really, really bad–writing out there, but there's also some stuff where you just have to cock an eyebrow and go, "Well, there's some talent and they're coherent, but they're just not ready yet."
The stuff doesn't quite work.
Livia says
It's really refreshing to read your opinions Nathan. I do appreciate what all the slush readers in the current industry do, but it's nice to see someone in the industry who's open to the idea that other slush sorting systems might be able to take the place of the current system. I'm a bit weary of the "poor uneducated public who's forced to drown under bad writing if there's no one to help them" scenario.
I have a bit more faith in the intelligence of the crowd/hive mind. If a colony of ants can calculate optimal paths to food just by wandering around aimlessly, then several million humans on the internet should be able to find good books.
Mary McDonald says
I participated in Authonomy and WEbooks…does that count?
Dan says
Miller's fear is not that technology will allow the denizens of the slushpile to disseminate their work. As you point out, they can already do that and have been doing it for years.
The problem is that e-books could tear down the institutions that identify the gems among the slush; bookstores and publishers and agents. If e-books continue geometric growth in market share, bookstores are gone. If you cut book sales in half, stores will no longer earn enough to pay staff or rent.
If bookstores disappear, publishers cannot continue to exist in anything like their current form. Nationwide bookstore distribution is the key service publishers offer authors that isn't available elsewhere. If the bookstores die, publishers become near obsolete; their sales mechanism isn't structured to work in a marketplace where online vendors are the only accounts.
Unless they can find a way to differentiate their product from the slush on Amazon, they're not going to survive in an e-book world, just as major record labels have really been laid low by the death of record stores.
In the current structure, authors who do good work differentiate from the slushpile through a very simple mechanism; they submit to agents and agents sift out the best stuff, and then the agents submit it to publishers, who sift it again.
If that infrastructure collapses, authors will be kicked into a world where they have to self-publish their work and try to connect with readers entirely on their own.
Most media consumers aren't interested in searching for the rare gems among thousands of amateur submissions. People defer to expert opinion, whether it's listening to whatever music the radio DJs are playing, or buying the books that are on the front table at Barnes and Noble.
It's likely that, in such an environment, a new tastemaker will emerge, possibly the Amazon "top reviewers." I kind of doubt their reign will be an improvement.
I suspect, instead of being paid advances in a post-bookstore world, authors will have to pay for freelance editorial, freelance marketing and publicity and freelance cover design. They'll probably have to bribe amazon reviewers under the table, or spend a lot of time working out deals to swap positive reviews to juice their ratings. Then, in most cases, they'll still get no sales.
This situation is not an improvement for anyone except authors who would self-publish currently. I still think Amazon is using the most favorable metrics to exaggerate its e-book numbers, but if Shatzkin and his crew are right about the growth of this market and the shrinking of traditional books, then publishing is going to get ugly.
Other Lisa says
I have to wonder, a little, about the Amazon announcement, since they have held actual sales figures for books on Kindle pretty close to the vest, right?
Also in the NYT article: hardcover sales are up this year too, "22 percent this year."
This is good news.
From my own recent experience in the land of eBooks (I got all the aps on my iPhone), I wonder if what might happen is, rather than an out-and-out takeover of paper/HC market share, that eBooks might expand the market for books in general (call me an optimist). I think with eBooks being less expensive and so instantly accessible, that maybe people will just buy more books. That seems to be what I'm doing.
Gotta say, though reading on the iPhone isn't bad (and would definitely do in a pinch), I don't like it as much as reading a paper book. I don't think I really retain the information as well, I feel more like I'm skimming part of the time. It's funny, because I read MS on my laptop screen all the time and feel very comfortable with that.
I haven't really seen books on the iPad yet but am wondering if there's something to the eInk idea and a stand-alone reader, because the iPhone definitely was a strain after a while.
And. Slush. Yeah. "Agent for a Day" was enough to make my poor head explode…
aimeestates says
I've never read slush, but I've learned loads from critiquing. Some of it's been painful, to say the least. But even published authors write drivel–I've read some first drafts that were later scrubbed into gems, and I'm glad I was included in the process so I could see the reality of it. I've certainly taken my attitudes down a peg and you won't catch me making those snide remarks about Brown or Meyer anymore, regardless of my opinions about any individual novel. I think the people who do have anger issues anyway…lol.
Nikki Hootman says
I don't even think it has to be a writing slush pile. My "day job" involves wading through 300+ emails a week (usually all in one day) and it has been a tremendous education. Working on the buying side of a used book store was also instructive. Owners of used books are very similar to authors in that they've got a ton of emotional content invested in the product they want to trade for money. And they get really upset when you don't agree with them about the value of their books.
BTW, Nathan, did you notice you used like eight colons in that post? 🙂
Nikki Hootman says
PS… Speaking of slush-of-the-future, my husband and I have been having excellent luck lately using Amazon's recommendation system. I wonder how much of tomorrow's slush will be filtered by non-human means?
Susan Mihalic says
Nathan, I've read the slush pile, and while most of it was dreadful, I never gave up hope that I'd find gold in there. Admittedly, I didn't read every word of every submission (you don't have to drink a whole carton of milk to know it's bad), but the possibility of finding gold kept me going. It happened a couple of times, too. A couple of nuggets out of thousands of submissions might not seem gratifying, but . . . yeah. It was.
Mira says
I agree very much with what Livia said. I'm also tired of the idea that the basic reader is dumb and needs to be told what to read.
The reality is that the reader always decided what to read. By buying books. Bestsellers are not bestsellers because someone told the public what to buy. They are bestsellers because readers like the books.
If telling someone to buy a book worked, publishing would be a much wealthier industry than it is now.
What I like about e-books is that the bottleneck disappears. Publishing shouldn't be a matter of luck. It should be a matter of reader interest in a quality product. E-books have an immediate chance to reach readers, which levels the playing field and gives quality books a chance to rise to the top.
I think asking agents to handle the slush pile is too much of a burden on their time, and an inefficient way to find quality books. Let the market handle that. It does it with music quite easily. You-tube is a great example of that as well. Quality rises to the top.
But, in terms of the actual topic of this post :), I believe you, Nathan! Every time I offer critique, I grow alittle as a writer. I can imagine the impact if I did that for hours a day.
I guess your experience in the slush helped you become a good critiquer and reviewer. I suspect some natural ability can be given credit for that as well, though. 🙂
Melanie says
There are always going to be book reviews and sales figures and word of mouth, all of which will continue to influence what people buy and read. Sure, the friends of ebook writers will buy those books, but for the most part, there's at least one respected third party that vouches for the books I choose to read. Just because more people have access to publishing doesn't mean the bestseller lists will change.
Ishta Mercurio says
Isn't being part of a critique group equivalent to reading slush?
Don't get me wrong – if you're in a critique group, you're serious enough about writing to at least know how to put a sentence together and come up with some great ways of expressing yourself. I don't mean to imply that what the members of my group put out is awful stuff that should never see the light of day, because it absolutely is not. But every one of my manuscripts was improved about 500% by the time my crit group had finished with it, and I think others would probably say the same. And now they're sitting in some slush pile.
So if your slush pile is bad, then my own pre-slush stuff that my crit partners read is even worse, no?
Sheila Cull says
With E books as with anything electronic, it reduces the need for specific talent from indivduals.
Although I still can't see a book reader choosing something electronic and random over paper pages at a book store – where only the best get the honor of sitting on a shelf.
Michelle Davidson Argyle says
Thanks for this post! I've sensed panic everywhere about this, but I don't feel it's a problem. It's just change.
After hosting several writing contests through The Literary Lab and my own blog, I've experienced (on a very small scale, I'm sure) what it's like to sort through slush. It's simply exhausting, but it has taught me a few valuable things about writing and publishing. You agents are simply amazing!
fakesteph says
Going through the slush pile (mostly with scripts) was more educational for me as a writer than any class I ever took in college. I think that when the slush pile hits the public (harder than it is now) that it may renew the public's faith in the gatekeepers.
And I'm not sure that ebooks will ever totally replace physical books. I only listen to music on my ipod or computer, but I still purchase my music via CD.
Ishta Mercurio says
I just read the New York Times article that Nathan linked to in this post, and was struck by the word choice: apparently, Amazon has sold more e-books than hardcovers, but there is no reference to how their e-books compare to paperbacks, or to all of their print books as a whole.
I don't doubt that there is a digital revolution underfoot, but I believe that misleading word choices like this can fool the public into thinking that the digital revolution is happening more quickly than it is, and influence more people to purchase kindles and e-books, thus speeding up the switch to e-books.
Humans, in general, have a herd mentality and will go where most of the others are going, and the media is not at all innocent when it comes to running misleading or slanted stories that guide people in one direction or another.
Emily White says
If you're right and the slush pile is soon going to be in the hands of the readers and reading slush inevitably improves a writer's ability, then that's a good thing! In just a few short years, nothing will come out but masterpieces!
All joking aside, I already find browsing through B&N daunting. I am going to be utterly overwhelmed if I also have to sift through straight up crap just to get to something worth reading.
I just keep thinking about Family Guy when Peter decided to become a writer. How much of that will I have to read through before I find something good?
Anonymous says
those statistics are interesting – 1 mss in 1,000 found vis slush making it to publication – esp. since that was my route.
but what the figure doesn't take into account is that it's not (in my experience), one submission to representation. meaning, there were a number (ten?) slush piles that my mss landed on before the agent who took me on.
Also, I don't think it's so strictly a numbers game for this reason: the agent's taste.
I think a lot of what you're talking about comes down to that one person like that one mss and deciding to put their hand behind it (as it were) and push (or, place it with the next one person who likes it as much or equally or more.) and so on.
what caught my eye was what you mentioned about reading slush is being able to spot clues. it would be helpful, even to people w/agents & are headed towards publication, to generally know what those clues are. staying on game being a never ending process …
the crowd sourcing dynamic that you present seems somewhat at odds with the "trusted publishers" notion. how do you see the eyes of many (the hive?) functioning in relationship to/with the top down nature of the (publishing) business? ultimately, one person decides and decides to write the check. is it possible that gatekeepers won't be the crowd, but remain individual who assert their power in different ways? or, at different levels of visibility?
Marilyn Peake says
I sympathize with you and other agents in regard to the slush pile. I cannot even imagine what that must be like! When you asked the other day why it seems that so many more people think they can be writers than other types of artists, I found myself thinking about that all through the day. The next day, I found myself wondering if a huge part of that might be the explosion in Internet reading, writing, and connecting online with industry professionals. Maybe people begin to think that because they write on the Internet and people read the writing they’ve posted and they can easily join writers’ groups where they receive praise and encouragement, they are indeed writers. In certain online writers' groups where it’s possible to become a big fish in a little pond, it’s easy to think that you’re functioning like every other writer: you write, others read that writing and praise it. I and many others don’t approach writing that way, but instead constantly challenge ourselves and demand of ourselves that our writing become better, and value the gatekeepers of the publishing industry that exist today, the agents and editors and other people who work so hard to improve the quality of promising manuscripts.
On the brighter side, we’re probably living in an historically relevant Renaissance era. Back in the time of the historical Renaissance, there was another explosion in respect for art and people creating art. Even though we associate the Renaissance with magnificent works of art, there was probably a lot of drek produced. Only the magnificent works remained. If the slush pile moves freely into eBook format, reviewers and other people will form businesses that are good at reviewing books, in the same way that The Huffington Post established itself as a reputable online indie news organization that challenged the established TV press and now has its members interviewed on cable news. In the book publishing arena, TINKERS, a novel published by an indie press after being rejected by every major publisher, won the Pulitzer Prize: here and here. Having access to books like TINKERS is the positive side of a digital Renaissance.
Dan says
Amazon's numbers are carefully chosen to support Amazon's boasts of robust e-book growth; the compared numbers are in total books sold, rather than revenue. Amazon is also stacking the entire e-book catalog against hardcovers, instead of comparing sales on a title-by-title basis.
Hardcovers are prominent titles backed by current marketing pushes, so they sell a lot of copies. But they're a pretty small proportion of the total number of titles for sale in the bookstore or online. Amazon stacked hardcover sales up against e-versions of the same titles at lower prices, and e-versions of every book originally published in trade or mass market paperback format, and books published only in electronic format, and e-versions of older bestsellers that are no longer selling in hardcover.
Amazon excluded free e-books from the calculation, but 80% of Amazon's e-books are $9.99 or less, and paid Kindle books include a lot of titles priced lower than $3 and often as low as $0.99. Hardcovers cost $14-17.
Also note that Amazon is currently 70-80% of the e-book market, and only about 20% of the book market.
Amazon has sold a lot of e-books. But, if Amazon were to compare overall sales (instead of only its own sales) of bestselling hardcovers to electronic versions of the same titles, the numbers would show that hardcover books are the dominant format and e-books remain a small slice of the pie.
Anonymous says
You're awesome, Nathan. I'd read your slush anytime.
Perri says
Isn't YouTube (and the Blogosphere) basically slush of one variety or another? We seem to sift through it okay.
Of course, reading a book is a totally different experience, and a lot more commitment than a 10 second video of some kid snorting wasabi.
I hope the e-slush readers of the near future will be a bit more patient…
Scott says
Sounds like everyone's assuming that
A) editors/publishers have good taste and are leading readers in the right direction
B) general audiences need a filter to tell them what to read
C)Books are a sacred art form
All wrong. No offense to esteemed, intelligent book-publishers, but I wouldn't trust one of them to tell me what I should read any more than I would trust a schoolteacher to tell me what I should learn. That's like asking a car salesman what the best car model is. You have to educate yourself, and you have to hunt down your own reading material.
Literature is following and will continue to follow the trend of the Information Age: we're not going to take the seller's word for it, we're going to look at other consumers' experiences and make an informed decision. I'm not talking about sycophantic blurbs (that's still the seller selling you on it), I'm talking about fellow readers who share an enthusiasm for a specific genre. Blogs, Amazon reviews, word of Twittermouth, aggregate sites that are not affiliated with the seller (RottenTomatoes, GameSpot, GoodReads). It's already happening in Hollywood, with the studios more and more at the mercy of audience word-of-mouth in spite of the $100 million marketing campaign, and it's going to take over books entirely.
As you listen more, you find people and voices you trust– it might be Nathan's blog, it might be your brother who reads lots of that genre, it might be a guy in Connecticut who lives in a treehouse and writes Amazon reviews on a lot of related products he's tried. It will NOT be the publisher, or the bookseller, or the author. They are responsible for visibility, but not for converting large numbers of fans. Money cannot buy fans like it could in the 80's. Good products well-publicized bring a loyal, enthusiastic following. Poor ones fail: throw more marketing money at it, and you will sink the ship deeper. Look at Apple, look at Harley-Davidson, look at Facebook.
Most of the conversation above has been about finding and protecting good writing, but I challenge the assumption that that's even what anyone is looking for. It's definitely a huge plus, but what people want is value, not quality. A book that has mediocre/barely acceptable writing but that tells a story you just can't live without reading will trump the literary genius' crusty little novella every time. Why else are Danielle Steele, J.K. Rowling, and Stephanie Meyer laughing all the way to the bank? They are giving people what they asked for, in exchange for money, and now both parties are happy. Maybe not intellectually enriched as much as they could have been, but pretty happy.
You don't see novels sitting around in museums being admired by tourists. In our society they are a commodity to be consumed, like hamburgers. I know it hurts, and I'm sorry too, but it hurts because it's true. They also happen to be a civilization-defining form of communication and cultural identity, which makes them a little bit different and more important than hamburgers, which is why we are having this discussion at all.
If you seriously read this far into my post, I am now genuinely embarrassed at having said so much, and will shut up.
Jens Porup says
I read slush for Opium Magazine (www.opiummagazine.com). I've been reading for them for a couple of years now. I reject most stories without finishing the first page. Any story that can make me read every word, until the very end, generally gets my thumbs up. It doesn't happen very often.
Too many people try to write "artsy." I would echo Oscar Wilde:
"I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful."
MJR says
I read slush for three years. The publisher eventually decided it was a waste of time and now doesn't accept unsol mss. Only one of the thousands of mss I read was published. Reading slush is truly depressing. You're right–only by doing it for a while can one understand this.
Bryan Russell (Ink) says
My time as an editor of a literary magazine was invaluable. Both for the insights into writing, and the chance to really understand the subjectivity of the process – it's all about making a connection through words. Few writers can do this, and I don't think anyone can do it universally. Hopefully, you find a way to make that connection, and with enough people to make a readership.