In publishing, the slush pile is the set of unsolicited query letters or manuscripts sent either directly to the publisher or literary agent by authors, or to the publisher by an agent not known to the publisher.
Sifting through the slush pile is a job given to assistants-to-the-editors, or to outside contractors (called "publisher's readers" or "first readers"). If assistants find something interesting there and can persuade a more senior editor to consider it, they may get some credit for themselves, especially if the piece is subsequently published and sells respectably.
Most agents and the major publishing houses do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. However, smaller presses may accept queries.
In 2008 HarperCollins introduced a website, authonomy, to manage and exploit the slush pile from a web-based perspective.
Famous quotes containing the word pile:
“That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)