Readers Vs. Slush Pile

Interesting article over at salon.com. Laura Miller, an industry insider, pokes fun at e-books and the changes in the publishing industry.

Miller takes a slightly snarky tone in describing the current state of publishing. New technology allows authors to bypass agents, publishers, and editors, and go straight to the readers. Miller poses the question, are readers ready to meet the slush pile?

From the article:

“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.”

This argument is not new, and there are many agents/editors/publishers who feel this way. They see themselves not only as gatekeepers, but as noble protectors. They are the ones keeping the helpless reader from this massive pile of slush and sludge. “It’s horrible out there,” there tell us. “Lucky for you we’re here to help protect you from all this garbage.”

This is all well and good, but completely silly. We live in the information age. Information wants to be free. The more information the better. What is slush and sludge to you, may be just what I’m looking for. Look at blogs. There are millions of blogs, and new ones starting up every day. But as Nathan Bransford put it, “No one sits around thinking, “You know what the problem with the Internet is? Too many web pages.””

Miller writes, “In other words, [finding gems in the slush pile is] a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it, and if the prophecies of a post-publishing world come true, it looks, gentle readers, as if that dirty job will soon be yours.”

Does Miller complain about how many Youtube videos there are? Blogs? Web pages? Wikipedia entries? I humbly suggest Miller read up on the benefits of crowd sourcing. E-books are going to make life easier for editors and bookstores, not harder. In fact, it may be the very thing that saves them. Instead of having to roll the dice, and trust the judgment of a few editors and agents, publishers will be able to look at Amazon, read reviews, and see how many copies have been sold. If it looks like a book is hot, snatch up the print rights and sell it.

What people like Laura Miller forget is that before any writer was good, they were awful. We’re often told as writers that it takes ten years to really master the craft. In the age of the internet, mastering the craft just becomes more public. Instead of writing six books, and finally getting that seventh one published, now we post the first six on Amazon, and finally get attention with book number seven. How does it hurt the general public? If the first six are really that bad, reviewers will share their opinion and nobody will read the books. Authors will either keep at it, or give up, which happens to be exactly what happens today.