[neilmarr]

Yup, Steve and Jim: But publishers and agents do NOT trawl for material. They don't need to. They already have more than enough. Only vanity press in its various guises solicits work.

As I mentioned earler, I've made an approach to an author only once in over forty years, and that because a foreign language agent I deal with was looking for work in a genre we don't publish ourselves.

There have been -- and still are -- many, many 'clearing houses' on the net. None of them work. Not one of them. Publishers and agents have neither the time nor the interest to visit what amounts to a second slush pile.

One site offering this service right now charges authors about $250 a pop. And it advertises charges to visiting agents and publishers of over $6,000 a year to use their service. Guess how many publishers and agents they have on their books. Yes, you guessed right.

I strongly suspect that, from the start, they knew full well they would attract zero professional attention, but putting such a high in-view price on the service to the industry suggested to the hapless author that his/her own work was worth a $250 posting fee.

The agent is the clearing house. Where an author is not represented by an agency, he must put in the groundwork himself to make sure his submission is well targeted and properly prepared.

It's not a tough job ... hit the library and refer to the latest Writers' & Artists' yearbook or Writer's Handbook ... hit some book stores, find books in your genre and note the publishers (sometimes even editors are mentioned) ... ask around ... hit the net ... visit publishing websites that are in submissions season and read their guidelines.

This research, remember, is a drop in the ocean compared to the efforft you put into the book itself. Surely you think your work deserves the extra mile. You wrote the book in isolation, now accept the fact that you are its salesman.

Cheers. Neil