@wanttaja , I've got Word on my laptop so format won't be an issue when it gets to that point, and correcting misspellings and grammar would definitely happen before sending it in! It's really fascinating to hear more about how the publishing process works, so thanks for sharing!
Best analogy I can make is to stick your male member into a car and keep slamming the door on it.
As far as fiction is concerned, the publishing industry is in a huge tizzy, with shortages of paper, disruptions due to the pandemic, and the flood of people sitting at home in 2020-2021 and figuring they might as well write the Great American Novel. Lot of writers out there (many don't deserve the term, 'author') flooding whatever market that might be left. Couple that with the downturn of people reading for pleasure and the change in taste in what people WANT to read, things are even tougher.
Had a series of 18 novels that I'd enjoyed over the years. Bit the bullet and bought the entire series on Kindle. Decided to take my hard-copy to the local bookstore so they could pass them on to the next enthusiast. The guy says, "I'll give you three bucks for the whole set. It's a great series, but nobody reads this stuff anymore."
Sigh. That's the kind of stuff I write.
The other factor is the book sellers. 40 years ago, books were sold by a bunch of independent stores. They would take changes on new authors, especially if they were local.
Then Barnes and Noble and similar warehouse companies arose. They drove the independents out by buying many copies of the most popular books and selling them for less. New writers? Who cares!
Then came Amazon, and the book warehouses started complaining. Boo F******* Hoo.
Sold my first novel (young adult naval adventure) in the mid '90s. It was written in a Commodore 128 computer, and printed on a daisy-wheel borrowed from a buddy who worked at a computer store. Got fifteen rejections for it until I found a buyer... a small, specialty press. Didn't cost me anything, but didn't make much in royalties, either. Best income was $500 I received as part of a deal to make an audio book of it. Sold my second novel easily, since it was just a sequel to the first.
Retired six years ago (almost exactly!) and decided to write the WWII novel I've had in the back of my brain for the last several decades. Cranked it out using my Windows box, digital submissions to a set of agents and publishers.
Seventy agents and publishers, in fact. Got responses from less than half...all rejections. Nothing at all from 37 of them.
[Slam....slam....slam.....]
DID manage to find a publisher. The outfit I sold my young adult novels to was branching out into mainstream subjects. Took the new book...but wants another sequel for the old series. New book is supposed to come out this year. It's about WWII pilots, no one here is going to be interested.
The above mostly addresses novels (e.g., book-length fiction). Non-Fiction is a MUCH easier sale.
The third leg of this is the non-book-length works. I've been fortunate enough to find a niche in the aviation world, and have gotten a lot of articles published.
But *Fiction* non-book-length? Ain't much of a market. Slam....slam....slam. Through much of the 20th century, there were many mainstream magazines publishing fiction. The Hornblower nautical series were often published serially in The Saturday Evening Post. Playboy was a famous market for fiction.
Most of those magazines are gone, and much of the short-story market with them. Niche publications...Science Fiction and Fantasy, for example, are still pretty strong. But competition is really strong there, too, and once you garner a half-dozen rejections, there's not many other places you can send them. Been there, done that.
I think
@2-Bit Speed is mostly looking for feedback on his plot, characters, and style of writing, though, for everyone recommending spell checkers. And for anyone who was worried about agreeing to read it because of that, the misspellings are very minor and there aren't very many of them.
I've broken too many hearts editing new writer's efforts. Even when I try be gentle, most don't really think there's anything wrong with their work, and they expect praise. You REALLY have to be ready for the car door slamming....
Ron Wanttaja
