The
Public Slush Pile
The dreaded slush pile.
Writers
view it as the place where manuscripts go to die, a symbolic elephants'
graveyard of writers' aspirations. Slush piles are physical or virtual
collections of unsolicited manuscripts that accrue in the offices of literary
agents and smaller publishers. With luck, some manuscripts are reviewed by
assistants or contract readers for literary merit and, if found worthy, passed
up the food chain to an agent or editor for consideration.
At
the end of my last post, I stated that I understand why writers turn to
self-publishing after having their work validated by others – and after
receiving multiple rejections from agents, the traditional
"gatekeepers" of the industry. Although self-publishing precludes the
need to add to traditional slush piles, they still exist in self-publishing – as
the public slush pile.
One
of the oft-noted results of self-publishing is the...how do I put this?...mass
of amateurishly written, poorly presented, and/or ineptly marketed works
offered to the public through self-publishing sites[1].
To be fair, that mass also certainly contains some of the best writing of this
century[2]. So,
the result of self-publishing is offerings that span the spectrum from some of
the worst to some of the best writing available.
Some
of those who would disparage the accumulation of self-published writing, from
the shoddy to the shining, would also defend to the death the concept of capitalism,
one of the basic tenets of which is free market competition.
Such
competition is the connection to the public slush pile of freely-published
short stories, novels, essays and other works available on sites such as
Smashwords, Createspace, KDP, and others. Implied is the freedom to offer any
product, within legal constraints of course, to the market for consideration.
In
the tradition of free market economics, the consuming public will decide if a product
is worthy of consideration and outlay of cash. The slush pile is open to the
public and not hostage to the judgment of literary agents, publishers, and
editors. Granted, one can question the judgment of, at least, American
consumers when considering the sales of pet rocks, invisible dog leashes,
viewers of "reality" shows, and the like; however, the freedom to
make those buying decisions is pivotal to the free market system. Like Mark
Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords, wrote in a 12/23/12 blog post,
"Readers are our gatekeepers."
It
would not surprise me to see the self-publishing industry, barely out of
diapers at this point, evolve to the point that, if left to its own devices,
it becomes a self-correcting outlet for deserving writers and a source for consumers
who wish to slog through the public slush pile.
[1] A cursory review of offerings on
self-publishing sites will confirm the existence of such writing and therefore
are not referenced separately here.
[2] A simple
search with Google® will uncover debut and previously published authors,
who have been highly successful and critically acclaimed, on self-publishing
sites and therefore are not referenced separately here.
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