Publisher's reader

A publisher's reader or first reader is a person paid by a publisher or book club to read manuscripts from the slushpile, and to advise their employers as to quality and marketability of the work. They can exercise considerable influence over the offerings of the publishers for whom they worked, and many unknown writers owed their first sale to a sympathetic publishers' reader.

External links

• 1911 article on publishing
• Jeanne Rosenmayer Fahnestock, "Geraldine Jewsbury: The Power of the Publisher's Reader," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Dec., 1973), pp. 253-272.
• Nash, Andrew, "A Publisher's Reader on the Verge of Modernity: The Case of Frank Swinnerton," Book History, Vol. 6, 2003, pp. 175-195.