And if you give the job to an assistant or intern who can take out the obviously bad fits, you might have a system that produces hidden gems a few times a year. If you’re taking all comers and moving through large volumes of work, you might stumble upon the next big thing simply by chance.Ĭonsidering that the poor unsolicited manuscripts will be bad enough to recognize quickly-within a few pages or even within a few paragraphs-you could sift through a huge numbers of manuscripts in a relatively short period of time. Well, it’s simple math that if you are reading more manuscripts from more sources, you’ll have more chances to strike gold. How do you go about discovering the next must-read book? But in this post, we’re going to focus on the reasons that you should accept unsolicited manuscripts, even considering the added effort of accepting, collecting, and reviewing works from dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of parties. And agents and editors across the world have made both decisions and found success. There are obviously big pros and cons to both approaches. Should I accept unsolicited manuscripts and pitches? It has many in the publishing world wondering: It also means taking the time and resources to wade through the slush pile, looking for something that simply might not be there. Accepting unsolicited manuscripts means opening the floodgates to anyone who can use a computer and press send. The manuscript is accepted, their book is published to an amazed public, and everyone lives happily ever after.īut in reality, the tale of the brilliant unsolicited manuscript is more often fiction than nonfiction. It’s a common fairy tale in publishing: a completely unknown author-perhaps someone who’s never published anything in their lives-sends an unsolicited manuscript to a famous agent, editor, or publishing house, where it’s discovered by someone who can see its rough brilliance shining through even from the depths of the mountainous slush pile.
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