A publisher's reader or first reader is a person paid by a publisher or book club to read manuscripts from the slush pile, and to advise their employers as to quality and marketability of the work. In the US, most publishers use a full-time employee for this, if they do it at all. That employee is called an editorial assistant.
Most publishers in the US prefer to receive some type of shorter query, decide if the subject and author fit their current plans, and then request a copy of the manuscript. When a writer ignores this request or guideline, and sends a full manuscript, many publishers return them unopened. These publishers, then, wouldn't have anyone "reading slush."
The first person to read the submissions can exercise considerable influence over the offerings of the publishers for whom they work, and many unknown writers owed their first sale to a sympathetic publishers' reader or editorial assistant. A film reader performs a similar task by reading screenplays and advising producers and directors of their viability as a potential critical and commercial success.
Famous quotes containing the words publisher and/or reader:
“To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.... A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honourable to which a man can be called?”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)