Get your novel noticed
It might sound eccentric, but the best way to get a book published is not to send it to a publisher.
By John O'Connell and Richard Cooke
It might sound eccentric, but the best way to get a book published is not to send it to a publisher. The days when pipe-smoking editors trawled the slush-pile for gems are long gone. It's to literary agents that most publishers now look to supply them with manuscripts of predetermined worth which have already been given a light editorial once-over. This isn't necessarily true of smaller publishers who, unable to offer big advances, are not on agents' radar. But I'm assuming for the sake of this article that you want to be the new Stephen King, and the sad truth is that big sales are rarely achievable without the marketing clout of a big publisher.
Before you even think about getting an agent, though, you've got to decide what your book is (or, if you haven't yet written it, is going to be). This sounds so obvious as to be stupid, but modern publishing thrives on precise generic calibrations. If you've written a novel, you need to know whether it's a crime thriller, a science-fiction epic, a historical romance or a "literary" novel (hard to define, but broadly one that conforms either to bourgeois standards of fine writing or radical standards of ungrammatical writing).
Publishing is not a charity. Think hard about whether your manuscript is saleable. No one wants to read a biography of your uncle who ran a health farm (unless he died a horrible death - misery memoirs" are all the rage).
Different agents specialise in different material. Buy The Australian Writer's Marketplace (Bookman $49.95) and look at which agents represent authors you admire. Select one, and send your first three chapters to them along with a synopsis of what happens next and a brief covering letter. Do not send your chapters to more than one agent at once. It's considered rude. Basic things you can do to increase your chances of standing out include using a sensible typeface, double-spaced, on one side of white A4. Bind it as simply as possible. Do not email it to agents, and don't put "©[Your name]" on the bottom. It just looks wanky.
If you manage to bag an agent, well done. But you're still some way off being published. They will want to finesse your manuscript, and it could still be months until anyone bites. If all this sounds wearisome, you could try publishing on the internet. Hits including Belle de Jour's Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl and Millington's Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About started life as blogs, and agents spend more time talent-spotting online than they're prepared to admit.