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

By: Yvette Davis

Yvette Davis — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:08:48 +0000

I wanna be a slush pile reader!
Where do I sign up?

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:12:56 +0000

Mike, Sherman and Rob:

M: I mentioned algorithms as a HELPER. Editors are often working with one right now, by the way—first-received manuscript read first, out of the slush. “Read” is loosely used. More likely it’s “skimmed,” perhaps not past the first page or so. But algorithms could at least HELP identify topics and styles of interest to editors and publishers. Let them not be the only criterion, please!

R. and S.: Appreciated the advice. Perhaps I should switch from Times to Georgia. Will think that one over. Sherman, what is it you especially like about Georgia? I, too, enjoy it. But many editors just might be too used to Times and Courier.

Thanks,
David

By: Sherman Dorn

Sherman Dorn — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:13:16 +0000

As a teacher, I don’t care what students submit, as long as it’s in a format (NON-PDF!) where I can change the font of everything in less than ten keystrokes. Someone submitted an entire paper in Arial? Or worse, in one of those funky almost-unreadable fonts? If it were submitted in hard copy, I’d be tearing my hair out. But if it’s in a standard word-processing file, I just highlight everything and change it to Georgia. (No, not Times New Roman, or even Garamond.) The only irritating things these days are when students hard-code page numbers.

I’d check the publisher’s submission site and follow that, even with electronic submissions. And I strongly recommend Georgia font, which is very easily readable on a screen. (Ban Arial! Ban sans-serif fonts for paragraphs!)

By: Rob Preece

Rob Preece — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:59:44 +0000

I do think New York’s resistance to electronic submissions is the fear that they’ll get even more submissions than they already do (having to go to the post office, buy a bunch of stamps, print out the MS, etc. has a tendency to make authors think twice before sending).

That said, I had a similar experience with a former agent–she preferred getting electronic submissions because she read them that way.

I like getting nice Word submissions, double-spaced, in either Courier-12 or Times-14. I then convert them for my eBookWise which is how I review submissions. But if I accept them, then I edit on the PC and use Word.

Best of luck with your submission.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:34:13 +0000

>>>If nothing else, publishers could regularly do word searches and even use special algorithms to help identify potential winners.

And what algorithm would that be? You need a whipping for even suggesting that horror.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:50:22 +0000

Hi, Michael. Great tidbit. I’d welcome your updating us on Baen’s crowd sourcing! Thanks. David

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:28:21 +0000

Once again, the folks at Baen are ahead of the curve on this one.

The problem with e-slush is that you can potentially get deluged with submissions beyond your ability to handle them. So Baen enlisted the help of folks from their bar web site. A group of ‘rabid’ fans who are willing to read anything signed up to help manage the slush pile. Each gets doled out a pile of electronic manuscripts to read. To help combat any tendency for tunnel vision on the reader’s part, Baen will send the same manuscript to a few slush readers. When one or more slush readers find something that they consider worthwhile they waive their electronic hands around until they catch the publishers attention. These selected novels are then reviewed for potential publishing.

I haven’t checked in on this project for many months (a year or more?), but it seemed to be working quite well the last I knew of it.

Michael