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 slush pile, 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. 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.

External links

• 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica 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.