How to avoid the slushpile

[WJCherf]

My experiences with the mainstream publishing world were so dismal that it stalled my eventual publications by some ten years. Throwing a ms. "over the transom" is a simply a ridiculous exercise of self-abuse. Finding an agent even worse. Much less that "agent" being successful with landing a proper publishing house. Praise God and break out the beer for POD and self-publishing tools.

 

[Warren_Paul]

My experiences with the mainstream publishing world were so dismal that it stalled my eventual publications by some ten years. Throwing a ms. "over the transom" is a simply a ridiculous exercise of self-abuse. Finding an agent even worse. Much less that "agent" being successful with landing a proper publishing house. Praise God and break out the beer for POD and self-publishing tools.

I'm going to be honest, with an attitude like that of course your experience would be dismal, especially if your idea of submitting manuscripts to agents was "throwing a ms. "Over the transom"" (perhaps you should read a dictionary on the meaning) Any unsolicited submission would result in failure and being ignored. That's what "query letters" are for.

I wouldn't praise God for self-publishing, now we get to sort through hundreds of horrible publications that previously would have never seen the light of day because they were just that, horrible.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

My experiences with the mainstream publishing world were so dismal that it stalled my eventual publications by some ten years.

Or maybe it allowed you time to hone your skills. I'd be surprised if you spent all that time sitting there waiting for an agent or an editor to pick up your work.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

There was a time when publishers would look at unsolicited manuscripts "submitted over the transom." ("Throwing" the manuscript sounds unnecessarily violent.) Such manuscripts went into the slush pile, which is to say, the pile of unsolicited manuscripts, not manuscripts that were automatically rejected. And sooner or later someone did read all those manuscripts -- although only the first few pages if the manuscripts were obviously bad -- and everything that looked promising eventually came into the hands of an editor. Some books from the slush pile did get published. My first book is one example.

Now there are so many manuscripts, it's impossible for publishers to look at them all, they are filtered through agents, and those agents have to make an initial assessment through query letters or small samples (depending on the preference of the agent). This can take a long time, because all of these people have obligations and commitments to the writers they have already decided to publish or represent. But they have to discover some new writers, because old ones die or stop writing, or no longer write books that will sell. So each publishing house does publish a few debut writers a year.

Do writers with publishable manuscripts sometimes get lost in the shuffle? Of course. There is no way around it. There is no use being bitter about it. No one sets out to persecute new writers. They have too many pressing demands to waste their time on sadistic games.

Much less that "agent" being successful with landing a proper publishing house.

I'm not sure what those quotation marks around agent mean, but we'll leave that aside. Once an agent agrees to represent a writer, he or she works zealously to land a contract. They don't get paid unless they do land that contract, so it would be absurd to suppose that they don't try very hard to make that sale. Since they do take on so many new writers, of course they can't sell every manuscript. They take that risk with every new writer they sign up: that they will work hard to sell that manuscript without, in the end, receiving a penny in return. Of course they have to be selective -- which means using their best judgement, not that they will be infallible.
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[evester]

it might be lazy on my part, but is there any chance someone could post or send me a link with roughly how a covering letter should look!! please, thats one of the things that worry me when trying to avoid the slush pile...

 

[The Holy Drunk]

Very sensible, Peter!

If you want to read a more sensible explanation of how to avoid the slushpile, see here:

Making Light: Slushkiller

(Apologies if this has been posted before and I missed it.)

Cheers, that was fun. A good example why you need to breath and relax after a rejection.

 

[Prophetsnake]

Thanks for posting that. Not too much new in it for me, but every little reinforcement of that meagre understanding is a help!

 

[sahlmi]

I wonder why they seem to be defunct now.

 

[tinkerdan]

Yes this is hilarious now and probably was way back then. Is it of any value; no!
Emphatically no!
Whether there is anything of truth here matters not because the author apparently wasn't taking himself serious why should we?

I've seen the written experience of several traditionally published authors and the only true agreement is that they don't have the same experience and though there might be and may have been some standards that were assumed at some time many of those have not met the test of time so it is best that you follow the submission guidelines of the recipient. If they fail to take it because of something they left out of their guidelines then you probably don't want to deal with them.

There probably are guidelines that you could pick up here or somewhere on line that in most cases may not hurt though that is only if you follow the guidelines to the place you are submitting because if they are deviating they will likely have it spelled out where you can say oh they want garamond font not courier.

I would tend to group this article with the ones I refer to as scams because it contains misleading information for anyone who might have problems identifying where tongue hits the cheek. I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone read it without mentioning that its a crock....

 

[sahlmi]

Nailed it. If every one of those silly little niggles were spelled out, excessive they may be, it would be understandable--excepting the obvious like faded print. But random slushing doesn't really make much business sense. That's like saying, "There could be a really good story in one of those randomly trashed manuscripts, but we'll slush it over a tiny technicality and take a lesser story because they managed to avoid that minor technicality." Pretty stupid.

 

[Brian G Turner]

That's like saying, "There could be a really good story in one of those randomly trashed manuscripts, but we'll slush it over a tiny technicality and take a lesser story because they managed to avoid that minor technicality." Pretty stupid.

The lesson being - read the submission guidelines, and avoiding making silly mistakes before sending.

 

[sahlmi]

Thus, "If every one of those silly little niggles were spelled out, excessive they may be, it would be understandable..."


From reading the original article, many seemed random (again, excepting common sense). My mistake if I assumed incorrectly.

 

[Glitch]

Reading submissions can be time consuming. It may seem stupid to pass over a story on a technicality, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

 

[sahlmi]

Mind you I'm specifically talking about the small niggling thing, not the overall practice. Things that the submitter may not have known (unless stipulated), like mentioning whether or not he/she were a member of SFWA or HWA. (I'm not a member of either, so that's not an advocation.)

Of course, the practice itself is necessary.

 

[tinkerdan]

There seems an assumption that they are reading them all or some designated amount.

Think about it; say there is a Genre that has a regular 5 openings and you have first all your standard authors to fill those you might not need any more do you read any submissions?
If you need one do you read 50 and then chose one or read until you find one you want to take a risk on?

There really isn't a need to be overly picky if you're only filling a small slot. That means that either the slush pile grows larger or you just send out a bunch of standard rejection slips so that the authors can move on. Which means that leaves some authors obsessing over something that is not yet quite defined as to why they didn't make the grade.

 

[Pwaa]

This is kinda brutal and disheartening to read, but at the same time I can't blame them. It's not nice to think someone's put their all into something just for it to get ignored, but if you've put your all into the content, then spending a tiny bit of time and effort in comparison in putting it in the type of package (which are really pretty simple requirements) requested by the editor shouldn't be a big deal. And let's be honest when at work and in a position of some sort of power, even minor, we can all be a little harsh.