Intellectual Property Law

The Slush Pile and Self-Publishing

By Posted by Alan Wexelblat

A Friday opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on the "death" of the slush pile is generating some amusing responses around the blogosphere.

(The "slush pile" is the name given to the unsolicited and unagented manuscripts that are submitted by authors directly to publishers, movie studios, etc. without the assistance of someone like a literary agent. Usually slush pile authors are unknowns hoping to break through.)

Boingboing pointed to a response by Seth Fischer on Rumpus in which he more or less admits that nobody's going to get published out of the slush pile - though he himself still sends in unsolicited manuscripts. Instead, he argues, authors should consider self-publishing. Considering that the Copyfight entry on CreateSpace, a self-publish-on-demand offering still continues to garner comments and feedback 2+ years after I posted it, I would say that this is a more viable option than people might initially assume.

Full post as published by Copyfight - The Politics of IP on January 20, 2010 (boomark / email).