Starting a new job in the editorial department of a London publisher in 1984, the instructions awaiting the new employee were simple: “Open all unsolicited manuscripts. Log them in the slush pile book. Read them and reject them.” Now, as the anonymous editor reports in a story for The Daily Telegraph, “Twenty-one years later, the climate appears to be changing. Publishers are increasingly alert to sources of undiscovered gems that in the past might have slipped through the net. The slush pile is one, word of mouth another, as well as books being launched by risk-taking small or independent publishers.”