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Is Self-Publishing the New Slush Pile or The End of Publishing?
Ebooks are changing the publishing industry at a rapid rate. Will it survive?
The publishing industry, like many others, is being forced to change by the unrelenting advance of technology. The way authors are discovered and the way they go about being noticed has undergone something of a transformation over the last decade. The traditional method of getting an agent or a book published is in a state of flux. Is the ‘slush pile’ still even a thing or has it transformed into eBook sales? And if an author finds huge success with an eBook, do they even need a publisher?
What is the traditional route?
Self-publishing and ‘vanity publishing’ have been around for a long time but have nearly always had something of a stigma attached. For a new author, the traditional and respected route for the last couple of centuries was that you were supposed to write a book, send it to an agent or publisher, who then added it to what was known as the ‘slush pile’.
It would eventually be looked by a hard-working, low-ranking member of the publishing team, along with dozens of other books. Of the twenty or thirty they would look at that day, one or two may proceed to the next stage — which just consisted of someone else reading and possibly rejecting it. If your work is rejected, it will be sent back in the self-addressed envelope you provided with a polite rejection note. The thud of it hitting the floor under your mailbox is a depressing one.
Then repeat.
If you were one of the lucky/talented ones that caught the interest of the person reading the slush pile, your magnum opus will need to impress a few others before you are considered for publication. Nearly all authors have gone through this and nearly all of them have been rejected at some point, some dozens or even hundreds of times.
Once the book has been accepted, the author then needs to negotiate a deal. This is where an agent is helpful as the publishing house, at that point, is often the one holding all the cards.
Then, roughly a decade ago, things started to change.
