Scott of the Cathartic (Slushpile Interview Bonus Content)

In the recent interviews with ASIM slush readers, I asked the question: What responses, if any, have you received from rejected writers?

A straightforward enquiry, yet it left the door open to answer the question I was really asking: Have any of these social landmines tried stalking you from Fortress Ego?

Three of the four interviewees responded to the literal question, indicating that (because the anonymity of ASIM's slush system) they haven't had to face an onslaught of 'How Dare You?' attacks from an author who doesn't understand their position in the submission process. 

Lee Battersby, however (who in the interview discussed his experiences reading slush for other publications), had a story to tell.

For readers familiar with the Australian SF scene, this story may be known (and old news) to you. But for everyone else, this is a world class example of "OMFG he did what?".

---

I received a story that was submitted by an acquaintance of mine. In the interests of anonymity, we'll give him my brother's name:  Scott. I'd met Scott at a few cons, we knew each other by sight, and he was a friendly enough guy that I quite liked him in that way you like casual acquaintances. Scott had been round the traps for a while and had a few publications to his credit, so it wasn't out of the realms of surprise that he'd send us something.

The story itself wasn't up to scratch: it was clumsily written, had leaps of logic that didn't gel, and the whole thing really didn't measure up to our needs. I sent him a rejection, thanking him and explaining why we wouldn't be taking the story. All standard.

Scott sent me an email in reply: Wow, he said, his first rejection in 15 years of industry success. He'd forgotten what they tasted like. Sorry he didn't meet our stellar standards, and thanks ever so for pointing out all his multitudinous faults from our position of all-knowing invulnerability. What could I say to that? It happens. I shrugged, and binned it. He'd had a silly moment, what're ya gonna do?

Then, over the next couple of days, I received a number of emails from friends, all of which asked the same questions: Had I just rejected Scott's story? What did I say? What was the story like? Scott, it seemed, had a blog. Scott had blogged his rejection. Scott had quite a few things to say about his rejection, particularly on the subject of editors who were too stupid to recognise a spoof of bad SF stories, which he'd deliberately written to be bad, and clumsy, and contain massive leaps of logic.

Anyway, he wrote, ha ha to the stupid editors, because he'd sent it to Argosy and they'd got back within 24 hours, and were "absolutely bugfuck" about the story. Scott was sure the large cheque he'd receive for the story would make it all worthwhile. In fact, Scott was doing pretty well at the moment. Look at all the other markets that were buying his work: here, and here, and here. Which was great for Scott. Except:

Argosy had been closed to submissions for over a year. Several comments appeared on his entry to that effect. Then someone decided to follow up the other stories Scott had mentioned. None of the editors had heard of him. Several visited his blog, just to tell him so.

Then another writer blogged an entry on his blog, on the subject of liars, and CV padding, and the sadness and pathetic nature of people who did so. They linked to Scott's entry. And so it went. More people commented, and blogged, and linked, and commented again. Pretty soon, within a month or so, the jackboot brigade were denouncing Scott at every opportunity, and calling for him to be run out of Dodge, as if we were all somehow members of a posse, charged with keeping good ole SF clean and pure of heart.

In the end, of course, Scott left the con scene, and stopped submitting to magazines, and locked his blog so only his chosen friends could read it, and his name became, for a short while, synonymous with 'mud' at the small press level in Australia. Until the next brouhaha came along, and the literary SA got another chance to shine their truncheons. Just to be clear, incidentally: it wasn't my brother. He doesn't need that sort of incentive to send me hate mail :)

---

Being publicly censured by your peers is a humiliating way to stop writing, but this is the closest he ever came to telling an entertaining story.

I've independently verified most of the details of this sordid tale -- including the last bit about Lee's brother, who did once send him hate mail. Lee inspires that sort of passion.

It's a shame Lee chose not to name the author, who doesn't have a snow ball's chance in hell of publishing in the Australian SF scene, but otherwise got away scot free. You could learn more from the blog entry by the other writer Lee mentions, but without any names, how would you find it?

Slushpile Interview: Spencer Ellsworth

Despite what the following interview might lead you to believe, Spencer Ellsworth is more than just a slush-reading intern for a leading literary agency (that has two blogs but no website). He's a first-time father trying to balance work commitments with baby's flagrant disregard for circadian biorhythms. He's also the proud subject of the sexiest back-of-the-head author photo I've seen in many a while.

More than that, Spencer Ellsworth was once one of you.

As an unpublished writer now reading slush for little more than kudos, I was keen to hear his opinion on the process of sifting the slushpile for the rare submission that's even worth an agent's attention. So when he volunteered to be interviewed, well naturally I jumped at the chance after a few weeks. When he submitted his responses via email, I immediately moved them to the Maybe pile.

If you're curious about the slush process, and just how long it takes a new reader to become jaded, read on. (If you're not curious, that might explain why you're still unpublished, and why your writing is like a grainy photocopy of a nineteenth century potboiler.)

101 Reasons: So, what qualifies you to judge other people's babies? (I mean, a *lot* of people have an English degree.)

That's a good question. I helped birth and nurture a science fiction magazine in college [UVSC], called Warp and Weave. I attended a by-audition-only writing workshop, Orson Scott Card's 2005 Literary Boot Camp, which parleyed me into the Codex Writer's Group, where I met Jenny [Rappaport] and critiqued some of her stories. Obviously that was my best criteria, because Jenny recommended me to Lori [Perkins].

What proportion of Perkins' 30,000 queries/year is your responsibility? How many, how fast, how often, how few deserving of attention?

The proportion changes depending on how busy Lori/Jenny are with their other clients. Each week Jenny and Lori send me around 50 emails. That's not much, but remember that in my first week they sent me a combined total of three hundred from their backlog. And I've only been doing this for a month, part-time.

Out of those, I've asked for partials from forty percent of the queries. It's not hard to write a decent query. But of those partials, I've sent two on to Jenny and Lori, and requested rewrites from three. The rest I quit on around the third page.

How has your perspective changed since the first week?

My first day I made a list of "maybe queries" and set them aside. At the end of the day I looked at them and realized that they were all rejection material for one reason or another, and I had been trying to find reasons to keep them.

Having written several slush novels, it still hurts me to reject someone's baby, even if they can't use gerunds correctly or insert a comma every four words. But there's no use in flawed but interesting queries. I'm better off rejecting anything that looks like it might not make it. If I let it through, it'll be worse when Jenny or Lori or a publisher doesn't take it.

How long did it take to establish a rhythm or routine?

I'm still working on that. I can go through about twenty emails an hour just saying "send me a partial" or "Thanks, but not for us." Rejecting partials is harder. I often don't read past the first three pages, so they get a note that says something like "It didn't grab me" or that references some good technique for beginning writers, like "don't introduce more than two characters in your first scene." But there are a few that are almost there, so I give detailed critiques on those, because I want the writers to make the changes and send them back. I have to care a lot to write a detailed critique.

Barring agent's tastes, industry vagaries and market forces, how many books are "good enough" to be published?

Out of three hundred queries, I passed along two to Lori and Jenny. Then of course, they have to like them, an editor has to like them, and a publishing house has to buy them. Two.

How far "out there" do some people go? Worst/strangest/most elaborate?

There are some rules on queries that everyone should know. Don't tell me how much your mother loved it. Don't tell me "I know agents ignore queries from unknown writers..." (So you know we're a snob club and you want in?)

One guy mentioned that he was extremely handsome and could eat X pieces of bacon in one sitting. He got a partial request, not because of that, but because his novel sounded funny.

If you could add some clauses to the submission guidelines, what would they be?

This is assuming that people read the submission guidelines? Because if they did, they would see that Lori prefers the first five pages be pasted into the query, but NO ONE DOES IT.

I would probably add some information that I've said before: make sure your grammar is perfect, give information about character, conflict and setting, don't introduce too many characters at once, don't use omniscient voice, show, don't tell, make your characters likeable, and present a compelling situation right off the bat.

How has reading the slushpile impacted your own writing, and your opinion of publishing?

Slushing is the easy way to learn to recognize mistakes in your own writing—easy in the sense that you hit yourself over the head with others' mistakes. I can see now which ideas are worth it and which are crap, or tell when I've really screwed up a story. Of course, it's much harder to let go and draft, because my inner editor has become a beast from overfeeding.

Publishing—I actually feel sorry for them. There is so much slush. The first time I had a novel rejected, at the age of 21, I thought, "They could at least take the time to really look at it. It's good once you get into it." If I had known how deluged the publishing world was by first-timers with those same thoughts, I would have cried for them. And I would have gone back and revised my novel.

How long can you imagine yourself doing this before you go completely insane?

What?  I couldn't hear you over the worms.
Seriously, I love slush. I just wish there were less of it. Like, one-tenth.

My thanks to Spencer for this interview. I love his use of 'slushing' as a verb.

Those of you who believe 101 Reasons is intended as reverse psychology may observe that the collective advice and commentary herein is more useful to your goal of getting through the slush stage than Lori Perkins' business card with a handwritten direct phone number. If you feel you haven't learned something, then it's probably time for you to stop writing, and save Spencer the half-minute it would take to determine that your work is an uninspired collection of basic errors. If you think you're already following his advice, then you're running out of reasons to justify your failure. 

Poll Dancing #5: The Results

As part of the increasingly inaccurately named International Slushpile Awareness Month (now in its 8th week!), I asked readers how long they've had to wait for a response to a slushpile submission.

(It was specified that a response had to be received. Otherwise, 97% would choose the "Never" option, because they're still waiting for a response from Hopelessly Underfunded Spur-of-the-Moment Vanity Project #1 and Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions.)

The Question: What's the longest you've waited for a response to a submission?

The Results: 

14% (7 votes)Seven minutes. Nathan said No.

0% (0 votes)All my submissions come back 'Address Unknown' in a week or so.

10% (5 votes)I send a 'Fsck You!' postcard after three months.

2% (1 vote)I waited five years, only to be told religious thrillers were out now.

22% (11 votes)A year is normal, right?

31% (15 votes)I've never submitted anything. I'm still preparing my whiny complaints.

2% (1 vote)I went to the agent's funeral to ask his widow if he'd gotten around to it.

2% (1 vote)No matter how long I wait, when I call to ask I get a 'No' straightaway.

2% (1 vote)You mean since the first submission, or since the last updated draft?

0% (0 votes)I'd sent them nineteen more stories before I got the first one back.

14% (7 votes)Other

('Other' responses included specific periods (3 months and 6 months), one respondent who misunderstood the exclusion on 'Never', and one respondent who had to beat a answer from an editor. I imagine it was a 'No'.)

Total votes: 42

Shout out to Nathan's homies.

The most important result is that 31% of you have not submitted for publication yet -- so there's still hope! Stop writing now while you can still deny you ever entertained this ridiculous fantasy.

There's also a bunch of you who are fsckin' liars -- no-one submitted more stories to the same publisher while waiting to hear about the first one?

Your May Demotivator

Click for larger version

Photo by Trent Ferrington, used by permission.

Use this Demotivator as your computer's wallpaper/background:

1. Click the above image to load the larger version (800 x 600 pixels)


2. Right-click the larger image and select "Set as Background" (Internet Explorer) or "Set as Desktop Background ..." (Firefox)


3. For best effect, set the image position as "Center" and set your desktop's colour to Black. (Windows: Start Menu / Control Panel / Display Properties / Desktop)
   

[28 May 2007: Updated with new photograph.]

Reason #14: Youre Speling is Atrowshus

(That's right, kids, to celebrate the end of the second week of the second month of International Slushpile Awareness Month, here's an all-new Reason with some slush references thrown in.)

There is a myth about publishing, propagated and regularly renewed by bad writers desperate to justify their futile reveries. The self-sustaining power of the myth is such that writers in its thrall cannot see, much less correct the basic problems in their writing -- problems so fundamental, the writers are forever doomed to get form rejections that don't alert them to how severe these problems are. This myth is:

Publishers employ copy editors to fix the spelling and grammar in your manuscript.

This myth is pervasive because in the most literal sense, it is true. Publishers do employ copy editors, and their role (in part) is to fix errors of spelling and grammar during a book's pre-publication phase. But in the funhouse mirror that is the bad writer's state of perpetual denial, this simple fact has been tortured into a comforting, yet utterly untrue corollary:

It dont mater how bad is my speling or grammar, cause thats' what copyeditors is for.

And thus a sizeable proportion of every slushpile is comprised of randomly, punctuate'd, fonetikly riten first drafts so bad, so head-shakingly wrong that they would make proofreaders weep and copyeditors resign, if they didn't initially make slush readers shudder with fear as they drop the submission into the Burn This pile.

I don't think it's much of a secret that this is the fault of the massive wussification of education in Western countries over the last forty years. After the peace movement of the 1960s, the powers that be decided that kids were getting too darn smart, and a smart kid was much less likely to say "sure Mister President, I'll spend six weeks learning to field-strip an M-16 and having my sense of self systematically destroyed so I can be sent to murder some poor, ill-trained conscripted suckers with a different skin color trying to defend their country with outdated weapons you sold to them before you decided that stealing their natural resources was cheaper than buying them". It's far easier to maintain a massive standing army ready to fight and die for no reason other than "the President says it's cool" if you don't teach them to think for themselves in the first place.

So, now we're on the second generation of kids who are getting a free pass through the school system while barely learning to read and write at a functional level. The frightening thing is that some of them still think they can be writers -- while the saddening thing is that if the education system was designed to develop intelligent and capable citizens instead of consumers and soldiers, they could have been writers.

Some of them (surely) have interesting lives, and strong ideas -- it's just that they lack the linguistic capability to express themselves, and what's left of today's reading public have less and less patience to wade through books that read like they were typed by throwing pebbles at a keyboard across the room.

And -- here's the kicker -- for the same reasons, skilled copyeditors are now rarer and more expensive than when your high-school-dropout granddaddy was nurtured by his publisher through a long and unremarkable midlist career. Publishers are desperate for the Next Big Thing, and they're prepared to spend even less money on even more books than ever before. So, while slushpile manuscripts are getting worse, less money and time is being put into polishing the rough gems. These days it's write well, and sell well, or get the hell out.

(You might wonder, if literacy levels are dropping, why you can't write for people who are just as illiterate as you. Simple answer: illiterate people don't buy books. The people who do buy books love words enough to recognize lots of them.)

If you're one of these writers, with great ideas and a passion for writing but lacking confidence in spelling and grammar, you're just fscked. Give up. You're wasting your time writing when you should be reading -- Modern English Usage, preferably, but at least read the spelling suggestions and grammar warnings in your word processor.

To help you figure out if you're in this category, here are some different types of spelling errors, ranked in increasing order of ineptitude:

1. Typos. Everyone makes the occasional tpyo. See? Especially in web forums and blog comments. Only the most pedantic grammar nazis get a bug in the butt over a few typos (and pedantic grammar nazis only buy new editions of OED anyway, so who gives a fsck what they think). They're easily fixed (the typos, not the nazis). But it's a problem if you make:
2. Consistent Typos. These are actually:
3. Words You Don't Know How To Spell Correctly. This category includes Words You Spell Phonetically. This is where it gets bad, because it demonstrates that you haven't read widely enough to see these words spelled correctly. You may be forgiven a (very) few of these, as the intended meaning will probably be understood. But agents will reach for the form letter when they find:
4. Words You Don't Know How To Use Properly. This includes tortured phrases like intensive purposes and classic mistakes like its/it's and their/there/they're. They're very simple rules, kids, and it's a shame you keep breaking them.

This last category is the (slush)killer, the "auto-no", the point at which your manuscript may simply become unreadable. They're especially dangerous because spellcheck software won't pick them up; indeed you may only discover them when a patient and better-educated friend looks up from your manuscript and says "What the fsck does this mean?"

Really, if you're going to write in English, you're expected to understand it. Category four blunders are like interrupting a serious conversation to tell a bad joke: people might ignore one and pause politely for two, but three or more and someone's going to throw something at you. You should be glad at this point that your manuscript didn't get published -- a hardcover hurts more.

Poll Dancing #4: the Results

As part of International Slushpile Awareness Month, I asked readers their opinions of the slushpile. Kind of an open-ended question, except I supplied the answers. With more answers to choose from, we got a record number of responses, and I think a more representative result.

The Question: What do you think of the Slushpile?

The Results:

3% (2 votes)I hate the name! Call it the Fountain of Undiscovered Genius

5% (4 votes)I hate the name! Call it the River of Unreadable Shit

1% (1 votes)It's unfair - books should be selected via Web 2.0 democracy

1% (1 votes)It's unfair - books should be selected via telepathy or nepotism

18% (13 votes)It's a mountain you have to climb to get published

7% (5 votes)It's a mountain you have to mine to find something worth publishing

0% (0 votes)I wish agents would make the slushpile their priority

16% (12 votes)I wish writers would make grammar their priority

1% (1 votes)It's a conspiracy to silence new and original voices

3% (2 votes)It's an industry-imposed tax on agents

19% (14 votes)The system doesn't always work, but it’s the best we have

26% (19 votes)Hey, as long as I don't have to read it

Total votes: 74

I don't think I even know 74 people.

Good to see that Meika is still reading. How's that web 2.0 working for you?

It's clear from these results that the only winner is ignorance. When you're not busy pouring more slop on the pile, you're pretending it's someone else's problem. I may have to poll your opinions on recycling and global warming.

Top Ten Reasons You're Stuck in the Slushpile

#10. You addressed your submission to "The Slushpile".

#9. You opened your query with "Dear Unthinking, Uncaring, Dream-Crushing Wannabe Who Couldn't Recognise Talent If It Shoved a Pulitzer in Your Open Client Slot."

#8. You opened your query with "Dear [DATA_AGENT_NAME]".

#7. Someone else already wrote The Da Vinci Code.

#6. You claim you won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1982.

#5. You weren't sure how to summarise your novel, so you copied the back cover blurb from Stephen King's The Shining.

#4. You describe your novel as "contemporary postapocalyptic chicklit, with overtones of minimalist literary horror, sort of a Tolkeinesque beat poetry take on a cyberpunk whodunit, as if written by Ernest Hemingway."

#3. Not only is your manuscript bigger than the New York phone directory, but in your submission package you accidentally included a New York phone directory instead of chapter 4.

#2. Your best fiction writing is your list of previous publishing credits.

and the number one reason you're stuck in the slushpile is:

#1. Your. Writing. Sucks.

Poll Dancing #4

In recognition of International Slushpile Awareness Month, this week's poll focuses on what you think of the Slushpile system. Love it or hate it, trawl it or live in it, it's as much a part of the publishing industry as paperbacks with the covers ripped off, as alcohol masking the pain of carpal tunnel, as form rejections with the words "not for us" circled in red ink.

Vote in the sidebar. Pick the answer that best reflects your opinion. I need to know how many disaffected Slushdwellers read this blog before PublishAmerica will buy ad space.

International Slushpile Awareness Month

Around the world, there exists a group of dedicated men and women who have given their lives to the pursuit of literature. They are explorers, warriors of a sort, who take on the unimaginable challenge of seeking flecks of gold in a reservoir of shit the size of Australia.

They are the slush readers, the unsung heroes of the unsung publishing industry. They screen out the unpublishable, the unpalatable, the unreadable short stories and novels, in search of that one manuscript in a thousand that is original, well written, proofread, spellchecked and printed in 12 pt Courier, and which might be good enough for agents and publishers to invest time and money to release to a public who might be willing to pay to read it.

How do they do it? Why do they do it? Does the thrill of finding a that rare gem offset the eyestrain of reading dozens of submissions that are illiterate, and hundreds that are just plain dull? Is there a sense of satisfaction in championing a work that goes on to success, and does this balance the frustration of a work getting vetoed further down the line? How does this affect their enjoyment of other, published literature? What are the long-term health risks?

Here at 101 Reasons, I'm declaring April International Slushpile Awareness Month, to draw attention to the plight of this maligned group. Over the month, we'll explore their thankless duties, and discuss what you can do to ease their suffering.

If you've ever been a slush reader, please let me know via email if you'd like to be interviewed about your experiences (anonymously if you wish).

Reason #11 Addendum: You Think You Can Fix Publishing

Disclaimer: I don't work in publishing. I'm not going to pretend that I have a thorough understanding of the business. I'm fairly sure no-one does. I don't think that paying attention to the publishing industry has given me some unique insight. It's not like I work for a government contractor.

There are problems in the publishing industry. Unless you're writing iambs by candlelight with a feather quill from your pet dodo, you probably know what a few of these problems are. Likely, you've also whined, grandstanded, and otherwise complained over these problems in coffeeshops, writing classes and convention after-parties, coming to no conclusion other than that the industry must be run by retards.

It takes a special kind of arrogance to think that you have come up with a solution to the problems that is both a) practical, and b) hasn't already been considered, tested or enacted by someone in a position to make a difference.

Arrogance is okay, though. It takes a special kind of arrogance to believe anyone wants to read your work. But if that arrogance extends to thinking everyone in publishing is stupider than you, and your only contribution is unoriginal, unworkable ideas, then you're just like every other schizophrenic barfly who thinks he's running for President.

The problems in publishing tend to break down into four categories, depending on who they affect:

Readers: Books are more expensive than they used to be, so many to choose from, this book sounds interesting but I don't know if I'll like it enough to buy it new, the new book by Favourite Author sucks compared to their earlier stuff, no-one's writing the books I want to read, these authors are all so rich they don't understand me anymore, I could write a better book by squirting ink out of my ass.

Publishing Industry Professionals: Paper costs rising, reading audience declining, annual profits not rising fast enough, no one buys short story magazines anymore, hard to differentiate new product in crowded marketplace, hard to stay two years ahead of the trends, authors are egomaniacal crybabies who think our job is to print money for them, I should just write a book myself.

Published Writers: Publishers only care about Big Name Author, they won't pay for me to stay in nice hotels while I bitch about doing signings, the Borders in Bumfsck Iowa won't stock my book, NYTBR won't return my calls, I can't feed my 87 cats on this advance, my royalty check seems to be missing a few zeros, I think I could've been a lawyer, what do you mean I have to wait for returns?

Unpublished Writers: Help! I'm drowning in the slushpile! Won't someone please validate me? There must be a way I can bypass actually writing a good book and get into print quickly so I can show all those haters who don't know who the fsck I am.

Unpubs tend to focus on the slushpile, not because it's the worst problem (it isn't), but because it's their interface with publishing, the Iron Gates of Approval that they're desperate to sneak under. Of course the slushpile is broken, if they don't immediately receive a grovelling acceptance engraved into a gold ingot. "Reclaim the slushpile!" they cry. "Asylum doors stand open! Change the system, so that my crap gets in."

Of course the response from the publishing industry is silence. Or a form letter containing a transcription of silence. Because as far as the industry is concerned, the slushpile isn't broken. Good writing stands out like the effervescence of a just-opened Perrier bottle when you're standing in a lake of fermenting pus. (It could happen, and you'll want a Perrier when it does.)

It's possible, even likely, that publishing will change dramatically in the coming years. But the slushpile ain't going away anytime soon, and the other problems really ain't yours to fix.

Imagine for a moment that every problem in publishing was solved. Readership doubled, and doubled again. Improved, targeted marketing allowed every reader to find books they wanted, and those readers bought more books. Sales went through the roof. Advances and royalty payments got sweeter and sweeter. Ten times as many books were published.

There will still be more manuscripts written than there are readers interested in reading them.

Even if no-one else took up the pen, the odds on publication might shorten from 1000-to-1 down to 100-1. That's still 99% rejection. If there was a proportional increase in new writers, agents would needs teams of slush readers to comb through hundreds of thousands of submissions.

Or imagine that magically, writers everywhere start improving. They hone their talent, postponing submission until they're convinced that their work is as good as they can make it. But the market can only support so much product. More rejection slips are handwritten, and the books that make it are great, but ...

The song remains the same.

Really, the "problem" of the slushpile could be halved, overnight, if agencies started insisting that every submission be accompanied by a signed statement reading "I have read and adhered to all the submission guidelines", and trashing any submission that doesn't.

Since that isn't going to happen, you might as well just "write a better book", or get used to disappointment. Or just stop writing, and make a real difference to the slushpile.

If you think you can fix publishing, you need to do a couple of things:

• Come up with an idea - one that is feasible and hasn't been tried before
• Make sure it isn't completely retarded, and would be accepted by the people it's supposed to help
• Figure out how it could be implemented, and how it would benefit the company who pays for it
• And maybe, oh I don't know, allow feedback from people interested enough to comment

If you're not prepared to take these steps, you're just adding more noise to a discussion already choked with a million little whiners.

At least you're not writing. There isn't any problem in publishing bigger than your craptacularity.

Axiom #2: Howe's Law

[Updated, see bottom.]

Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work.

It's about time we had another axiom. I was going to work on something else today but this just came up: a post on a blog humbly titled Working Toward the Betterment of Publishing. It's about ... (pause for groan) ... Web 2.0, and solving the problems of the slushpile.

It's so full of wrong-headed ideas, it's funny. Not funny ha-ha, or even funny peculiar, but isn't it funny just how wrong someone can be.

Read it if you want (no, Mr Scalzi, you're not obligated). If not, here are the bullet points:

• Publishers don't do market research
• Readers could tell publishers what books they want, but publishers don't ask
• A book "fails" if it doesn't earn out its advance
• The slushpile could be automated
• Let's Web 2.0-ify the slushpile
• I know it's been tried before but my idea is slightly different

The author tries to counter all possible criticism in advance, and even demonstrates something approaching sarcasm by linking to my dissection of Web 2.0.

I'm posting a rebuttal here, because Mr(s?) Betterment of Publishing is an anonymous coward who doesn't even allow comments. So Web 1.0.

• Publishers don't do market research

Based on? No publisher's market research project has ever asked their opinion. Seriously. Let's move on.

• Readers could tell publishers what books they want, but publishers don't ask

Readers tell publishers what they want every time they buy a fscking book. The problem is not the market research, it's the unpredictable connection between what has sold before and what will sell in two years' time when today's signings hit the shelves.

Market research sucks. People tell market researchers what they think they want to hear, and what they think won't make them look like an asshole. Market research never maps to actual purchase behaviour. Just look at the money wasted by the fast food industry, marketing moderately healthy meals people said they wanted but don't buy.

• A book "fails" if it doesn't earn out its advance

The advance is a fraction of the total cost of publishing a book. It's a pittance paid to placate authors that something is happening during the long journey to publication. It's the low-bid value of your silence. "Earning out" is unusual enough for established authors to joke "If a book earned out the advance, the advance wasn't big enough." A book only "fails" if it doesn't sell enough copies to justify taking the risk on the next one.

• The slushpile could be automated

This is why WTtBoP doesn't have comments.

This idea is just so bad I can't believe a human thought of it. Can you even imagine the uproar amongst the great unedited masses if agents used computer algorithms to screen the slushpile? How would you feel if your rejection slip read "806 instances of: Fragment. consider revising." ?

Natural language processing is still a pipe dream, it's several generations away from being ready for such a "mission-critical" deployment. Software cannot tell the difference between Faulkner and syntactically correct gibberish. How would you define the filters? How many spelling and grammar errors would be permitted? What about experimental fiction?

If you think this idea has any merit, type a few pages from your favourite books into MS Word and turn all the grammar rules on. Until SkyNet becomes self-aware, and starts buying all the e-books on Amazon, and you're writing for the amusement of your artificially intelligent toaster, this idea is the worst kind of stupid.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say No real writer would ever let a computer determine the quality of their work.

• Let's Web 2.0-ify the slushpile

Honestly, if you still give WTtBoP any credence after the last point, you might as well buy the land in Florida too. Let's have a website where 1000-word samples of the slushpile are posted, and readers can vote on the best! Hey, people can even get behind their favourites, and create pre-release buzz!

Oh, and:

• I know it's been tried before but my idea is slightly different

Never mind that we have a system like this in place (called "short fiction magazines") that's already foundering. Never mind that a large portion of the slushpile consists of paranoid egomaniacs who would sue/stalk anybody who ever posts a remotely similar story to theirs. Never mind .. oh, just make up your own reason why you wouldn't want to participate.

These sites fail not because they "haven’t been tried by a major publisher or agent before", but because there's no incentive for ordinary readers to engage in this process. Why would they? Who wants to read unedited, unfiltered garbage? Who could possibly care enough about what gets published ...

Un-fscking-published writers, that's who. This solution only sounds attractive if you're part of the problem.

Please, please, stop bitching about what you think is wrong with publishing. The problems are not going to get solved by a few shitty writers blogging about how it could all be fixed with the magic of programming.

You have three choices:

• Take the money you're wasting on POD and invest in some servers. Buy a book on Web 2.0 programming, and write the website that's going to fix everything. Programming is easier than writing fiction, believe me. Instant feedback. If it works, you can go IPO and get pornstars to light your cigars with C-notes for the rest of your life.
• Write a better book. One that passes all the grammar checks in Word.
• Just shut the fcsk up already.

UPDATE: I have to entertain the small possibility that I've been had, by an apprentice of what an Australian comedian once called "non-laughist humour". Surely, the author of the original post cannot truly believe in his argument, and that it was just "linkbait", as the author claimed in a gutless, abusive email.

See, the whole notion of a Web 2.0 solution hinges on the (unrewarded) efforts of ordinary web users, giving of their time to read and make comment on the thousands of slushdwellers, towards the "betterment of publishing". Yet the author doesn't even allow commenting on their own blog, because they're afraid of what they refer to as "retard farming".

Is there anything of substance left in their post to defend?

Guest Post: Slushpile Freakonomics, by Paul Riddell

Paul T. Riddell had given up writing. For five years, he wrote nothing but paleontological research papers and the occasional blog post about paleontological research - which can hardly be considered writing, in the sense that he ever expected someone to read it. He had come to accept that his writing talents were moderate, his sense of humour was transient, his chosen genre (SF) was already hopelessly overpopulated with moderate talents, and his chances of building a successful career out of contributor's copies was non-existent. Five years later, even finding examples of his columns, from the fossilised traces of long-extinct SF rags, is an exercise in digital archaeology.

Until he found 101 Reasons, whereupon he felt compelled to dust off his academically-atrophied sarcasm and write, again.

Ye Gods, I've actually inspired someone to write.

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It's an unrelenting fantasy, along the lines of the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series or George W. Bush demonstrating competence at anything other than turning water into urine. Whenever the economy goes sour, and companies demonstrate the main concerns of their management by laying off everyone within the organization who doesn't have an MBA, the willing victims of one of the most pervasive alternative employment scams get hit with the delusion: "Well, now that I don't have anything else to do with my time besides watching television, now I have the time to become a freelance science fiction writer!"

A lot of people benefit from that delusion, but not usually the wannabe writer. The dream usually lasts about six months, until the unemployment benefits run out, the savings run out, and "any day now, the checks will be pouring in" won't keep the landlord or the bank from releasing the dogs. In the meantime, Writer’s Digest has a big chunk of cash from sales of magazine subscriptions and those godawful guides on "how to write science fiction". The people who sell "story wheels" and other gadgets purporting to instill creativity into the hopeless have their money, as do any venues promising to sell accurate and methodical lists of open markets and those other wannabes who got caught in early layoffs who now teach "success in writing" night classes.

In the end, if the wannabe actually gets something completed, Publish America and XLibris will be glad to assist with filling in the blanks on "A (blank) and his (blank) soon are (blank)." Oh, and the post office gets its own "render unto Caesar" cut. The only people who lose out are the editors and slush pile readers at any publishing concern with a public address, because eight hours of reading unsolicited Absolutely Fabulous/Farscape crossover slashfic would leave anybody with the urge to relax that evening after work by grabbing a sniper rifle and shooting at school buses.

That's not to say that the enterprising wannabe can't set himself up for a career of incredible bitterness or unrelenting fantasy in freelance writing. The problem here is the timing.

See, at about the time most of the newly unemployed figure that they'd be much happier sitting at home writing instead of jobhunting or asking their parents "Have you already rented out my old room?", it's already too late. Magazine editors already have a nice fat pile of contacts for willing and dependable writers, and they're already bombarded by requests for favors from old college chums who can pay for heroin or rent but not both. Book editors are already switching over from paying someone to haul the slushpile to the dump to using the waste paper in the furnace to heat the offices. The only affiliations that will get a wannabe’s foot in the door are purely tribal, and plastering the words "Member, SFWA" all over a manuscript will only guarantee that International Slushpile Bonfire Day comes early. The trick here is to start writing when things start getting good, because that’s about the only chance for the mediocre to break in without college connections or serious bribes.

Here's the concept. Instead of waiting until the hammer of unemployment forces you into accepting that giving two-dollar blow jobs on a street corner is preferable to the humiliations inflicted by editors at Wired, wait until the economy starts looking up. That's when you start seeing unemployable writers with delusions of making an evolutionary leap start setting up publications of their own. The Cat Piss Man with fifteen years of desktop publishing experience and just as many years of story rejections has an income tax refund check burning a hole in his pocket, and it’s just enough to publish one issue. The fratboy who put together a neighborhood zine when he was eight realizes that he's getting far too old to continue with the title "trust fund brat", so he starts a weekly newspaper. The crank writer who constantly bitches about the state of science fiction gets a job that pays marginally more than his old insurance company mail room slot, and he figures that now's the time to edit an anthology "to show them all". All of them need content, and since real writers are now getting work at real publications, they’ll take anything they can get.

Waiting until things are good also works for promotion and presentation, too. In the science fiction field, good times in employment means that more computer programmers decide to take the disposable income normally assigned to action figure acquisition and use it to start a convention, and certain family-run organizations seeking a way to, erm, launder certain income streams are more than willing to chip into obvious losing propositions if they distract certain tax collection services. Either way, while nobody actually accomplishes a damn thing at a convention other than recycling beer, having spare fundage from a real job gives leverage that the otherwise penniless hordes of wannabes don't have. Whether it's financing a party with an aftermath cleanup that would have horrified Hunter S. Thompson, or buying a dress with a neckline so plunging that everyone can see your clitoral piercing, the idea is to get the front cover of Locus without actually having to write anything. That’ll come later.

Okay, so let's recap. Bad times means more writing competition. Bad times means Mom will yell at you if you spend your days writing instead of jobhunting. "Good times" means more venues, more resources, and more opportunities. "More opportunities" means that you’ll have a nice fat list of stories and/or articles to show off to editors when the economy goes to hell again in the future. Unfortunately for you, "good times" means more employment opportunities, and Mom will kick you out of the house if you don’t have a job by the time you turn 50. Does that mean that you’ll be back to working 60-hour weeks and you won’t have time to write? Well, sucks to be you.

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Don't encourage him. He'll just keep writing.