TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Electronic slush piles: One more kick start for e-books?

By David Rothman

Are slush piles about to go electronic in a major way, and could this be a nice kick start for e-books?

In case you’re a techie, not a word person, the term “slush pile” refers to manuscripts that publishers receive directly from obscure writers and not-so-favored literary agents. Most of the submissions are crap. In Sophie’s Choice, however, William Styron’s protagonist ends up rejecting the raw version of Kon-Tiki—Thor Heyderdahl’s best-selling saga of a trans-Pacific raft trip. In fact, in real life, Styron did spurn Kon-Tiki.

Not surprisingly, however, despite major publishers’ common policies against unsolicited works, some editors can’t resist a look at slush. Even solicited manuscripts can pile up quickly. Wouldn’t it be better, for editors’ sanity, not just forests, if slush arrived via e-mail—as electrons rather than as unwieldy collections of atoms? Imagine, moreover, all the postage writers could save. If nothing else, publishers could regularly do word searches and even use special algorithms to help identify potential winners. Houses could contract with security firms to provide decent virus screening. So let’s not dismiss the idea of a massive shift to e-slush.

S&S part of trend?

Recently, in fact, Simon & Schuster revealed that some editors, not just sales reps, were using Sony Readers to share manuscripts (I wonder if that meant some OCRing or, instead, requests to writers to email their Word files). A first step toward the above scenario? Among major p-publishers, is a trend about to unfold? At e-book publishers, of course, e-submissions of full manuscripts are old news, as Rob Preece of BooksForABuck, a TeleBlog regular, can attest. But not at the giants or many literary agencies.

This week, however, a literary agent, who has represented her share of big-name clients, offered to see an entire manuscript from me in E. She’s no techie, as far as I know–rather, someone who’s worked in the trade for decades. And now here’s the kicker. She didn’t even want to see the P version of the manuscript.

E for all submissions—even from biggies?

I don’t know if she uses a e-dedicated reader, as the S&S people do, but however she’ll read my project, some interesting questions arise:

1. If my last name were Oates or Clancy, would she actually prefer a paper submission? Is E an indication that she won’t take the full manuscript seriously? I can’t tell. Perhaps she truly prefers screen-reading these days since the manuscripts are easier to share with colleagues. I’m egotistical enough to think so.

2. How will my book fare compared to what it would on paper? Dan Viesel at the Institute for the Future of the Book has noted the differences between media–what would Marshall McLuhan think? As it happens, I use long paragraphs in places but generally go with short ones and plenty of dialogue. On a PDA or cellphone, with a small screen and short lines, that should give me an advantage over writers whose paragraphs march on forever. Then again, if the agent reads me in Word and is using a small font, I might be at a disadvantage. Two- or three-line paragraphs might become one-liners, interfering with readabilty.

3. Should I use single or double spacing? In the electronic mode, I prefer single-spacing for reading and writing—since the eye can see more at once. But not everyone would agree. Anyone have opinions here?

4. If E manuscripts can be shared more easily than the paper variety can, just how will this influence the types of books agented and published? Fewer titles with Faulknerian paragraphs? And will we see even more books selected by committee than we do now? Will this work against quirky fiction? Or mean that with more eyes reading the books in the raw, both fiction and nonfiction will improve?

Positives for e-books

The good news for e-books is that if editors grow accustomed to first reads in E—not just detailed editing in it—people at major houses will be more open to the possibilities of E. Perhaps big houses will start taking e-book originals more seriously, as well they should. E-books are the new paperbacks, and all the attention given the Kindle—regardless of its DRMed eBabel—can only help.

Detail: From the reader’s report on Kon-Tiki, in Sophie’s Choice: “The idea of men adrift on a rift does have a certain appeal. But for the most part, this is a long, solemn and tedious Pacific voyage best suited, I think, to some kind of drastic abridgement in a journal like the National Geographic. Maybe a university press would be buy it, it’s definitely not for us.”

The Wowio ange: You can download Sophie’s Chice for free from Wowio, the provider of ad-supported books. It’s in PDF but can be converted smoothly to Mobipocket via Mobipocket Desktop. For some reason, I was able to pull it off with Mobi, even though earlier I’d had problems with Wowio files I’d already read in PDF. Just a fluke, or has Wowio fixed the problem?

Technorati Tags: S&S,Simon & Schuster,William Styron,Sophie’s Choice,Kon-Tiki,Thor Heyderdahl