elies on his friends.

In the first place, this means agents.

Now, many big literary agencies get swamped with submissions too, so they use the same system as the one outlined above, the inexperienced recruits from academia. But agents are canny. They need to make money, so they also rely on another avenue. Their friends. Authors they already work with will tell them about people they've met at conventions. Other agents will tell them about people they don't have the time to take on. People who work in the agency wil

More reasons why internet publishing is better (for authors)

If you ask most busy authors, they will agree on one thing. They want to get published. They want a publisher. Trouble is, in our modern world, it depends what you mean by 'a publisher'.

For more than two hundred years, we in the West have got used to the idea of a picture in our heads of some person – usually a man – who will be sitting at a desk in an office, usually somewhere in a big city, poring over manuscripts submitted to him by aspiring authors. Then, through a process of selection and ranking, 'the best' will be selected for publication. 'The publisher' will get the book to the public and the author will get rich.

Trouble is, it doesn't happen. Usually.

One, the publisher doesn't select 'the best'. To do that, he would have to read all the submissions. No publisher has the time – or the inclination – to plough through a pile of manuscripts, many of which, let's face it, may be pretty dire, or even unreadable. So, if he has any money or history in the trade, the publisher will hire a bevy of young people, many straight from University, to take the uncongenial task of scrutinising submissions. Great, except that they still won't be able to choose the best either. Most of these youngsters will have a great track record in reading books, but those will usually have been ancient manuscripts, Victorian novels or Shakespeare plays. While they were busy studying literature at University, they won't have had much time to read popular fiction. Faced by a mountain of modern murder mysteries and chick lit romance, they won't have any standards to work by. They might assess your submission in terms of George Elliot, Joseph Conrad or – even – Martin Amis, but they will have no idea what people these days really enjoy reading.

The chances of your hot new novel getting through this roadblock are minimal.

So, second piece of bad news for authors, even though the publisher has set up (and pays for) this busy office, he tends not to rely on this questionable process of getting manuscripts from authors at all. Instead, he relies on his friends.

In the first place, this means agents.

Now, many big literary agencies get swamped with submissions too, so they use the same system as the one outlined above, the inexperienced recruits from academia. But agents are canny. They need to make money, so they also rely on another avenue. Their friends. Authors they already work with will tell them about people they've met at conventions. Other agents will tell them about people they don't have the time to take on. People who work in the agency wil

, through a process of selection and ranking, 'the best' will be selected for publication. 'The publisher' will get the book to the public and the author will get rich.

Trouble is, it doesn't happen. Usually.

One, the publisher doesn't select 'the best'. To do that, he would have to read all the submissions. No publisher has the time – or the inclination – to plough through a pile of manuscripts, many of which, let's face it, may be pretty dire, or even unreadable. So, if he has any money or history in the trade, the publisher will hire a bevy of young people, many straight from University, to take the uncongenial task of scrutinising submissions. Great, except that they still won't be able to choose the best either. Most of these youngsters will have a great track record in reading books, but those will usually have been ancient manuscripts, Victorian novels or Shakespeare plays. While they were busy studying literature at University, they won't have had much time to read popular fiction. Faced by a mountain of modern murder mysteries and chick lit romance, they won't have any standards to work by. They might assess your submission in terms of George Elliot, Joseph Conrad or – even – Martin Amis, but they will have no idea what people these days really enjoy reading.

The chances of your hot new novel getting through this roadblock are minimal.

So, second piece of bad news for authors, even though the publisher has set up (and pays for) this busy office, he tends not to rely on this questionable process of getting manuscripts from authors at all. Instead, he relies on his friends.

In the first place, this means agents.

Now, many big literary agencies get swamped with submissions too, so they use the same system as the one outlined above, the inexperienced recruits from academia. But agents are canny. They need to make money, so they also rely on another avenue. Their friends. Authors they already work with will tell them about people they've met at conventions. Other agents will tell them about people they don't have the time to take on. People who work in the agency wil

publisher will hire a bevy of young people, many straight from University, to take the uncongenial task of scrutinising submissions. Great, except that they still won't be able to choose the best either. Most of these youngsters will have a great track record in reading books, but those will usually have been ancient manuscripts, Victorian novels or Shakespeare plays. While they were busy studying literature at University, they won't have had much time to read popular fiction. Faced by a mountain of modern murder mysteries and chick lit romance, they won't have any standards to work by. They might assess your submission in terms of George Elliot, Joseph Conrad or – even – Martin Amis, but they will have no idea what people these days really enjoy reading.

The chances of your hot new novel getting through this roadblock are minimal.

So, second piece of bad news for authors, even though the publisher has set up (and pays for) this busy office, he tends not to rely on this questionable process of getting manuscripts from authors at all. Instead, he relies on his friends.

In the first place, this means agents.

Now, many big literary agencies get swamped with submissions too, so they use the same system as the one outlined above, the inexperienced recruits from academia. But agents are canny. They need to make money, so they also rely on another avenue. Their friends. Authors they already work with will tell them about people they've met at conventions. Other agents will tell them about people they don't have the time to take on. People who work in the agency wil

k lit romance, they won't have any standards to work by. They might assess your submission in terms of George Elliot, Joseph Conrad or – even – Martin Amis, but they will have no idea what people these days really enjoy reading.

The chances of your hot new novel getting through this roadblock are minimal.

So, second piece of bad news for authors, even though the publisher has set up (and pays for) this busy office, he tends not to rely on this questionable process of getting manuscripts from authors at all. Instead, he relies on his friends.

In the first place, this means agents.

Now, many big literary agencies get swamped with submissions too, so they use the same system as the one outlined above, the inexperienced recruits from academia. But agents are canny. They need to make money, so they also rely on another avenue. Their friends. Authors they already work with will tell them about people they've met at conventions. Other agents will tell them about people they don't have the time to take on. People who work in the agency wil

elies on his friends.

In the first place, this means agents.

Now, many big literary agencies get swamped with submissions too, so they use the same system as the one outlined above, the inexperienced recruits from academia. But agents are canny. They need to make money, so they also rely on another avenue. Their friends. Authors they already work with will tell them about people they've met at conventions. Other agents will tell them about people they don't have the time to take on. People who work in the agency will have cousins and old pals from college who have written novels. That's easily a big enough pool to find new books from.

Then all the agent has to do is ring his pal at the publishers. The publisher is happy because he has someone telling him that the selection process has been done (elsewhere) and a great new book was selected. The publisher tends to say yes. Bingo, a new author.

If you're a hopeful new writer, the question then has to be - you know anyone in the business? It's a lot safer bet than posting your new baby off to an address you got out of the 'Guide to Literary Agents', or whatever. And, after all, that's how most successfully published authors did it. (I said 'most'. You won't get that impression from the media, or publishers' web sites, or magazines about publishing. Instead, they emphasise the (occasional) lucky author who go picked off 'the slush pile', without mentioning how rare this is. It is, though. Very rare.)

Third, nobody, but nobody, will agree on what is 'good'. Every author who has every tried to sell a book will be able to tell you stories about the one publisher who said a book was 'too long' and the next publisher who said it was 'too short'. About the one agent who said the manuscript 'didn't have enough description' and the next one who said it was 'too flowery, overflowing with adjectives'. Some advisors will try and tell you this a good thing. They will say that faced with such diversity, any author has a good chance of finding a firm, somewhere or other, to take them on. You'd think so, wouldn't you? No, think about it. If you went to a garage and the man said your car was suffering from a blown gasket, and you weren't sure about that, so you took it to the next motor engineer and he told you that the motor had a problem with the tappets, which would you fix? Which would cure the problem? Which would get the car back on the road?

It's like that with publishers. You could take the advice about 'too many adjectives' and strip them out of your manuscript, but the agent you're currently dealing with might still turn it down. The next one