The Publishing Room

The Publishing Room
Maintained by Raymond Long. Disclaimer: any information on this website could be wrong.

Basic advice: don't write to make money. Hardly anyone succeeds at that. For money, be a dentist or an accountant. The only reason to be a writer is that you love writing. If that hasn't discouraged you: start at the bottom of the industry, and work up step by step. Start out writing novellas of 30,000-40,000 words. This takes less time and is much easier than writing full-length novels. Submit them to ebook publishers. What are ebooks? Ebook acceptance rates are higher. You gain some publication credits, and you learn to write by writing. Study the market. When you're established in ebooks, move up to small print publishers. When you're established there, write a novel targetted at winning a literary agent.

Publisher type	How books are submitted	Acceptance rates	Typical preferred word count
Large print publishers	Through literary agents (exceptions)	Very low	70,000+
Small print publishers	Directly from authors	Low	70,000-100,000
Ebook publishers	Directly from authors	High to low	30,000+, but shorter works are frequently accepted

List of publishers accepting submissions directly from authors.

SELECTED WEBSITES
The internet is awash with resources for authors, and pages listing resources for authors. You could spend your life just reading them. Here are the few I've found most useful.
Firstwriter.com - Searchable database of things that accept fiction submissions: publishers, agents, magazines and writing competitions. Pretty much all you want in one place.
About.com - Collects a lot of the standard advice in one place. Reading this you'll learn what you might have gleaned reading dozens of author advice websites. Scroll to the bottom of this page for a lot of intra-site links.
Miss Snark, the Literary Agent - A literary agent's blog, setting out why books get rejected. Not updated since 2007, but still full of gems.
The Reason Editors Reject Manuscripts - Vicki Hinze surveyed editors, asking them why they reject work. This is a summary of her findings. I don't know when this article was written, but I think it was before 2008.
How to market your book on the internet - This is the first really useful article I've read on this subject, out of a lot. Author Simon Haynes explains how to get good use of discussion groups and social networking by being a content provider instead of an advertiser.