Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

It does depend on whether you're writing fiction or non-fiction. It depends on the genre of the book, the demographics of the target audience and such things as distribution and marketing.

Some Background about Me
I have had three books published in the past. The first was published by the McGraw-Hill Companies in early 2001. It's a PHP programming book so it appeals to about 37 people worldwide. In this case McGraw-Hill approached me. They had a title, a concept and an outline for the book when I was called. They just needed a writer.

My next two books are self-published by a fantastic print-on-demand company called Lulu Press. I wrote the books, uploaded the text and the cover art, then began the process of marketing the book. Again, these are PHP-related programming books, so I simply had to contact the 37 interested people and let them know the book was available. Sales exceeded expectations and all was well.

Back to the Story
Fiction, however, is a whole different beast. Fiction lives or dies on marketing, spin, buzz (whatever you like to call it) and a whole lot of that is done by the publishers or agents of the publishers. Fiction writers traditionally write their manuscript before approaching a publishing agent. Fiction writers don't contact publishers directly (at least that's the accepted wisdom) because publishers are already too busy. Agents should be queried to determine if they are interested in a title before the manuscript is sent. From my experience, agents are also very busy and so they read query letters looking for very specific criteria to determine whether they might be interested in actually reading a manuscript.

If you happen to find an agent that is interested enough to respond positively to a query letter, the next step is generally to send an outline and the first several chapters of the manuscript. The problem is that if the query letter doesn't work, the manuscript will never be requested. The query is a marketing letter, not a novel, so I believe it requires a totally different writing style and personality than any novel. Therefore I believe that it stands to reason that there are many great books seeking agents that never get in the door because the writer doesn't write marketing material well.

On the other hand, if 195,000 titles were published in 2004, it may simply be that there is too much material in general. In that case perhaps the only way to break into publishing is to know someone and obtain a referral to an agent or publisher. Maybe it is all about who you know...