新书评介：文学代理人与出版业的幕后

I used to work for a publisher that accepted unsolicited submissions. Our guidelines, apparently unrevised since the advent of the internet, required authors to mail their manuscripts in hard copy with a self-addressed, stamped envelope to ensure their safe return. It fell to me, as an editorial assistant, to stash them deep in a desk drawer in my cubicle. Whenever this drawer began to overflow, I gathered with the other assistants in the conference room for a “slush lunch,” during which we would tear open the submissions, read aloud passages of notable clownishness, and stuff the return envelopes with form rejection letters, trying not to get ketchup or grease on them. …