What is the Slush Pile? Hint: It Isn’t a Heap of Dirty Snow

It’s surprising how many authors hear the term “slush pile” and immediately think of the grey, wet, icy stuff that remains on roads after a few hours of cars driving on fresh snow.

Of course, to the uninitiated author submitting a manuscript for publication for the first time, the metaphor is appropriate. Wading unaware into an agent’s or publisher’s slush pile can feel like stepping off the curb into that dirty wintry mix without waterproof boots on.

But what is a publishing slush pile?

Dictionary.com provides this definition:

The online Cambridge dictionary provides a slightly meaner one:

What neither definition does for the author braving the slush pile for the first time is provide an explanation of what the slush pile is for that agent or publisher and what the author needs to know to navigate it.

In publishing, the slush pile is that collection of manuscripts–both solicited and unsolicited–that authors have submitted for consideration for publication. This image comes from the submissions office at Tor publishing (from the days when most submissions were mailed via the post office):

Photo credit: gruntzooki under CC BY-SA 2.0

Every agent and publisher faces dozens, if not hundreds, of submissions every day. And every agent and publisher has a different process for managing their own slush pile.

But each agent or publisher has the same goal: to evaluate the manuscripts in their slush pile, looking for those gems that they might want to publish, in the very limited time they have to read submissions.

When the publisher or agent is faced with that huge pile of unread submissions (hundreds, in some cases), the natural tendency is to look for the low hanging fruit, those manuscripts that can be easily and quickly rejected so that more time could be spent with more promising submissions.

Low hanging fruit is easy to find. Not my genre? Toss it. Didn’t follow the guidelines? Lose it. Twenty typos on the first page? Trash it.

Those submissions that remain are the ones we get excited about.

With the Slush Pile Secrets posts, I share insights learned after a couple of years of reading submissions, provide do’s and don’ts, and how to rise to the top of the slush pile.