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The slush pile goes online

26.10.07 Liz Bury

A new answer to the old problem of how to find the gems in the slush pile is emerging online. As Scott Pack, commercial director of The Friday Project, says: "Everybody knows there’s a lot of great writing out there." But sorting out the manuscripts that show real promise from those with a long way still to go is a time-consuming affair. Some publishing houses such as Faber and Penguin no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. Many other houses’ resources are too limited for them to read all the work they receive with any degree of thoroughness.

Sara O’Keefe, senior editor at Orion Books, says the Orion fiction department alone receives around 60 unsolicited submissions a week. "For the size of the department, we’re absolutely inundated with scripts," she says. Although she herself doesn’t read the slush pile, O’Keefe asks her assistant to pull out one or two things each week that she thinks might work. "It’s my own unofficial way of keeping an eye out for talent," O’Keefe says.

At Curtis Brown, literary agent Camilla Hornby says the agency’s general slush pile receives about 10 manuscripts a day, and that the agents meet once a week to review them. "We want to be democratic and open to unsolicited works," she says. On top of these, she and the other agents also accrue their own personal slush piles. "I personally get maybe two or three manuscripts a day," she says. "Every so often I take something from the slush pile. At the moment I have a crime novel that I’ll go out with shortly, and there are a couple of authors I’m still working with."

And yet despite the best efforts of editors and agents seeking new writers, finding a genuine new talent from the piles of unsolicited texts that arrive in the post each day is relatively rare. Faber’s recent decision to discontinue its slush pile was put down to its lack of resources to do it justice.

Modern slush

But as one more door closes in the faces of unpublished writers, others are opening: a new generation of peer-review websites for would-be authors is starting to self-select promising work and polish it up to a high standard.

Both O’Keefe and Curtis Brown have been involved with www.youwriteon.com, an Arts Council England project that is designed to encourage and support unpublished authors as they develop and improve their work. The site, which is fully automated, asks writers to upload opening chapters of between 6,000 and 10,000 words, or short stories.

The authors then provide reviews of other site members’ work, in return for reviews of their own chapters; the writing is rated using a scoring system based on eight elements of a novel, such as storyline and characterisation. Each month the top five highest-scoring are given a free critique of their work from a professional agent, publisher or published author, and also enter YouWriteOn’s bestseller chart.

O’Keefe is one of its professional reviewers. "It’s part review, part edit—whatever I feel the work needs," she says. "I send it, with positive and negative feedback, to Edward [Smith, who runs YouWriteOn], who passes it on to the writer. A couple of times I’ve come quite close to taking something on."

Snapped up online

One such book, originally called The Emperor’s Elephant, by Doug Jackson, was critiqued by O’Keefe, who suggested several fundamental changes to the character of Caligula, the main focus of the story. Jackson then spent several months rewriting, and was taken on by literary agent Mark Stanton at Jenny Brown Associates in Scotland, who sold the work to Simon Thorogood at Transworld as part of a six-figure, two-book deal. "I was pipped to the post," O’Keefe says. "It was fabulous and I really wanted it, but I was on holiday when it came in. It was frustrating, but it was one of those things." The book is now called Caligula and is due out from Transworld next July.

Scott Pack at The Friday Project bought children’s book The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke after it was on YouWriteOn; two other writers from the site are being represented by agencies Curtis Brown and Conville & Walsh; and manuscripts have been requested by Little, Brown, Orion and agency Christopher Little.

HarperCollins ahead

With its eye closely trained on digital opportunities, HarperCollins is now developing its own peer-review website for unpublished writers. Rahim Hirji, HC corporate strategy manager, says: "We realise there are talented would-be authors out there, and also recognise the onset of digital. We tried to think about those two things together to look at how we could utilise the internet in finding new talent."

Would-be authors will be asked to submit all, or at least 10,000 words, of their work so that it can be reviewed by other writers or those looking for talent. "We are using the democratic nature of the internet, where people like to give opinions and review and rate work," Hirji says. "There are two sides of the project: the cream of the crop rising in the sense of the best reviews, but also we will put the reviewers into their own leagues."

The site, authonomy.com, is provisionally scheduled to go live in February 2008. Hirji adds: "It’s difficult for publishers to go through every manuscript that comes in, so we look to agents. We wanted to create a site where talent is showcased. It’s not just a marketing exercise; we are looking to source talent in new ways."

Review not rejection

Scott Pack says he is "not surprised" that HC is developing such a site. "It is one of the more forward-thinking publishers and, also, it won’t have to use agents," he says. "[At The Friday Project] we bypass the traditional publishing model already." The publisher has sourced much of its talent online from the blogosphere. "We found that trawling the web for talent was easy when it came to non-fiction, but with fiction, people don’t tend to put their novels online."

As well as its acquisition through youwriteon.com, The Friday Project has an arrangement with peer-review site thefrontlist.com (also linked with agency A M Heath), through which it bought The Equivogue Principle by Darren Craske; and it also works with the Arvon Foundation website, on which Pack writes a monthly blog.

"From agents, most people only get a standard rejection slip—not feedback," Pack says. "Any sort of advice is useful. The only drawback is, as more and more sites come about, things will be spread more widely; and bear in mind that most of what’s out there is pretty crap, but if it’s 60% or 70% there, it’s worth spending some time on." He notes that many publishers will only consider work that is quite well polished, and that agents now spend a good deal of time on pre-editing. "Forums do help," Pack says. "With The Equivogue Principle, it was clear he was a very good storyteller—you could tell that much."

The good stuff

YouWriteOn is designed to encourage writers to continue honing their work until it’s of a standard that might catch the eye of a professional talent-spotter. "It’s so hard now to be considered on the slush pile," Edward Smith of YouWriteOn says. "Literary agencies and publishers are inundated with unsolicited manuscripts. Out there is a community of readers and writers who want to help people develop and find new talent." The website has 4,500 members, with 10,000 submissions since it started in January 2006. "It’s really about helping writers to evolve and develop their work, to rewrite and re-edit after feedback."

"On YouWriteOn, the standard of work is much higher than on the slush pile," O’Keefe says. "A piece of work has been through its paces several times. It may have been seen by an editor and rewritten. It’s an evolutionary process; writing takes commitment and hard work."

Hornby agrees that this feedback culture is hugely beneficial for would-be authors. About YouWriteOn—to which Curtis Brown lends its professional reader—she says: "It’s a great idea for a site. I’ve not signed anything from it yet, although I’ve got quite close on a couple of occasions. I love that we’re involved with something that’s about filtering out writing and finding the good stuff."

She continues: "Because of the number of submissions we get, feedback is not something we can provide, unless we really want the book. It’s got to be more useful to writers than a rejection letter. We encourage writers to get as much feedback from as many places as possible; to be able to hear criticism and re-edit. But we’re not replacing our slush pile with it. I can’t imagine Curtis Brown closing the door to unsolicited mss. I’m not sure we’d go down a route of managing an online site; although maybe we should think about it!"

 

ONLINE TALENT SPOTTING

PEER REVIEW SITES

www.abctales.com
A place to upload, read and discuss poems and short stories.

www.authonomy.com
HarperCollins’ site, along the same lines as YouWriteOn (below), provisionally scheduled  to launch in February 2008.

www.thefrontlist.com   
Writers submit a synopsis and two consecutive chapters of up to 3,000 words per chapter. They critique the work of others and have their own work critiqued. Each month, the best are referred to either The Friday Project or agency A M Heath.

www.youwriteon.com
Authors submit opening chapters, between 6,000 and 10,000 words, for peer-review. The top five best-reviewed each month receive a free critique from a professional agent or editor. Sponsored by Arts Council England.

COMPETITIONS

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Open for submissions until 5th November, excerpts from semi-finalists and then finalists  will be posted for customers to review on Amazon; the winner, chosen by customers, will be announced in April 2008, with Penguin USA committed to publish.

www.mediapredict.com   
Project Publish with Simon & Schuster and Touchstone. An online competition to source  new talent, won on 1st October by Lori Culwell for Hollywood Car Wash.

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