When scholars transmit manuscripts to journal editors, they assume that their papers will be read by gatekeepers who have standing in their fields. Although editors may lack expertise in a subspecialty treated, broad field exposure supports the form of responsiveness: to return papers without benefit of external review or their transmittal to outside readers, the depth of suggestions for revision, and the degrees of affective support for authors who are encouraged to revise their work.The placement of scholarly book manuscripts, the focus of this article, poses quite different problems. Although large publishing houses employ staff editors with backgrounds in various scholarship domains, frequently the initial correspondence regarding a scholarl5 manuscript appears before an editor or press director who lacks disciplinary credentials. These individuals, whose specialty is &dquo;publishing,&dquo; and who have some understanding of different specialties (Mann, 1981: 104), decide whether an author's work will enter the full review process. Unlike the submission of the actual journal manuscript, authors describe their book manuscripts in letters and prospectuses and request permission to submit the full work for review.The purpose of this article is to elucidate the initial and most critical phase of the scholarly book review process, a phase overlooked by most commentators and which, when treated, typically suggests the exercise of objectivity. I would call such a label &dquo;mythical&dquo; (Orlov, 1976).Scholarly publishers commenting on the early phases of the review process either ignore the role they play or judgments they make, other than to select responsible referees (Harman, 1961), or espouse criteria in