: Re: Do publishers take the time to look at works from writers who have no qualifications or experience in the industry? We are currently in the process of writing a debut novel. Although we are

You're looking at the wrong sort of qualifications.

A publisher does not care what grades you got in school. While I ended up self-publishing, I have talked to a couple of traditional publishers, and had one contract (that ultimately fell through, but whatever), and no one ever, ever asked to see a copy of my high school report card.

And for a simple reason: They want to see the text that you write. If your writing is clear and readable and interesting and coherent, they don't care whether you learned that in school or later, or whether you were a great writer in school but your teachers were idiots, or whatever. It doesn't matter.

If you're writing non-fiction, they care about credentials in the field. Like if you're writing a book about, I don't know, the oil industry say, then they're very interested in whether you have any experience working in that industry, or have worked for government agencies overseeing the industry, etc. If your answer is, "No, but I've thought a lot about it and I read a magazine article about it, well, I looked at the pictures" then you're going to have a hard time selling.

I've never tried to write a novel so I suspect that experience in any particular field doesn't matter as much. If you are writing a novel set in feudal Japan and you are some sort of expert on feudal Japanese culture that would probably help, but I doubt it would be a big issue.

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: Re: Do publishers take the time to look at works from writers who have no qualifications or experience in the industry? We are currently in the process of writing a debut novel. Although we are

More posts by @Nickens642

: I would not change capitalization to conform to some standard. You are quoting someone else: you should quote him as accurately as possible. The original writer may or may not have had a

: Avoiding making all your characters sound the same We surely all have little quirks to our speech. Like my daughter once criticized my writing for using the word "surely" too much. (See, I

: When mentioning two people in a sentence, what's the proper way to use a pronoun to reference the first? Example: A fighter is someone who fights for the pleasure of the spectator, against

: How to list concepts and tie them in together? The green pieces of paper folded up in your pocket, the balance in your checking account, your mortgage, and that time you paid for dinner

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