Let's break this down by question.
How hard is it to get a book published?
Short answer: Very. More on that in a minutes.
What chances do you have?
Answer: Your chances are not very good. Let's pretend that you DO write a good book. A REALLY good book in fact. Even if you write perfectly, your plot is fresh, and your characters believable, there is still a pretty good chance you WON'T get published. Your query letter could be poorly written. There could be little market for the type of book you've written. You could simply get lost in the shuffle. It is very, very difficult to get published, even if you write well. The supply of eager authors out there simply outweighs the demand for books.
What is the process?
Answer: There are a few routes you can take to getting published. The two biggest differences are "self publishing/vanity publishing" vs. "publishing house publishing/real publishing". If you choose t go with a pub house, the two biggest differences are between getting an agent or not. Here are those three paths lined out:
Self publishing:
Pick a vanity press. Pay them a load of money. They will print your book for you. Very few bookstores will actually stock it. You will most likely never make back the money you paid. But hey, you got your book published!
Publishing without an agent:
You finish your manuscript. You learn how to write a query and do so. You research various publishing houses and find what their requirements are for accepting manuscripts. You send out your manuscript (or portions of) to said companies. Once there, 95% of unrepresented manuscripts are pretty much tossed out without given more then a slight glance. About 2% of unrepresented manuscripts make it through the initial review. If you are part of that lucky percentage, the company contacts you and requests the rest of your script (if they work on partials first) or begins the process of working out a deal/contract. If all goes well, you get published in a few months. If you aren't accepted, they may let you know... but more likely they won't. So you send out your manuscript and query to a few more companies... lather rinse repeat.
Publishing WITH an agent:
You finish your manuscript. You learn how to write a query and do so. You research various agents and get a list together of ones who could possible represent you. You query them and hope they respond back with requests for access to your manuscript. If they like it, they may accept you as a client. If not, you keep querying until you (hopefully) find somebody. They then go pimp out your book to publishing companies, which might actually pay attention and not just immediately throw the manuscript in the trash.
Obviously this is a very brief overview.... Personally, I think publishing with agent is the way to go, but that's just me.
Why do some authors become famous and some don't?
Answer: Once again, a good portion of this is luck and the market being right. Book publishing is a business. Publishers spend a decent amount of money on publicity. Let's say a company is publishing two books at around the same time: one is a young adult fantasy/romance novel, the other is an adult historical fiction novel. Which one do you think they will spend more money trying to publicize? Obviously, at this time, they're going to spend more on the teen fantasy/romance, because it is something there is currently a demand for. However, if you had asked the same question back in the early to mid 2000s (before Twilight, when books like The Other Boleyn Girl and Memoirs of a Geisha were getting a lot of attention and movie deals), the answer would be the opposite.
Of course, a good portion of a books fame comes from word of mouth publicity as well, which is where all those author blurbs come in, and the name drops on various websites.... a lot of that can be traced back to the publishers putting more effort/money into a project they think will succeed.
So some of it comes down to good writing, while some of it just comes down to a book meeting a need and good timing.
How hard is it to get a book published?
Short answer: Very. More on that in a minutes.
What chances do you have?
Answer: Your chances are not very good. Let's pretend that you DO write a good book. A REALLY good book in fact. Even if you write perfectly, your plot is fresh, and your characters believable, there is still a pretty good chance you WON'T get published. Your query letter could be poorly written. There could be little market for the type of book you've written. You could simply get lost in the shuffle. It is very, very difficult to get published, even if you write well. The supply of eager authors out there simply outweighs the demand for books.
What is the process?
Answer: There are a few routes you can take to getting published. The two biggest differences are "self publishing/vanity publishing" vs. "publishing house publishing/real publishing". If you choose t go with a pub house, the two biggest differences are between getting an agent or not. Here are those three paths lined out:
Self publishing:
Pick a vanity press. Pay them a load of money. They will print your book for you. Very few bookstores will actually stock it. You will most likely never make back the money you paid. But hey, you got your book published!
Publishing without an agent:
You finish your manuscript. You learn how to write a query and do so. You research various publishing houses and find what their requirements are for accepting manuscripts. You send out your manuscript (or portions of) to said companies. Once there, 95% of unrepresented manuscripts are pretty much tossed out without given more then a slight glance. About 2% of unrepresented manuscripts make it through the initial review. If you are part of that lucky percentage, the company contacts you and requests the rest of your script (if they work on partials first) or begins the process of working out a deal/contract. If all goes well, you get published in a few months. If you aren't accepted, they may let you know... but more likely they won't. So you send out your manuscript and query to a few more companies... lather rinse repeat.
Publishing WITH an agent:
You finish your manuscript. You learn how to write a query and do so. You research various agents and get a list together of ones who could possible represent you. You query them and hope they respond back with requests for access to your manuscript. If they like it, they may accept you as a client. If not, you keep querying until you (hopefully) find somebody. They then go pimp out your book to publishing companies, which might actually pay attention and not just immediately throw the manuscript in the trash.
Obviously this is a very brief overview.... Personally, I think publishing with agent is the way to go, but that's just me.
Why do some authors become famous and some don't?
Answer: Once again, a good portion of this is luck and the market being right. Book publishing is a business. Publishers spend a decent amount of money on publicity. Let's say a company is publishing two books at around the same time: one is a young adult fantasy/romance novel, the other is an adult historical fiction novel. Which one do you think they will spend more money trying to publicize? Obviously, at this time, they're going to spend more on the teen fantasy/romance, because it is something there is currently a demand for. However, if you had asked the same question back in the early to mid 2000s (before Twilight, when books like The Other Boleyn Girl and Memoirs of a Geisha were getting a lot of attention and movie deals), the answer would be the opposite.
Of course, a good portion of a books fame comes from word of mouth publicity as well, which is where all those author blurbs come in, and the name drops on various websites.... a lot of that can be traced back to the publishers putting more effort/money into a project they think will succeed.
So some of it comes down to good writing, while some of it just comes down to a book meeting a need and good timing.
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