: Re: Do most novels not get published? If a person writes a novel, grammar alright, decent story, word count, etc. everything okay, Is it a crap shoot for that person to get published? Is it

@Cugini967

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To answer your question literally: most novels that are written will never be published. Thousands of people write a novel every year, and probably less than 1% of those novels are ever read by anyone other than the author's friends and family. Publishers and agents turn down many thousands of manuscripts a year.

However, it does not follow that publishing is a matter of getting lucky. The novels that are published are the ones that are at the top of the heap in terms of quality, so you can vastly increase your chances of being published by writing a really spectacular book. It's not enough to make no mistakes--you have to absolutely kill at some aspects of your story. (And if your story is very strong in some areas, weaknesses in other areas may be overlooked.)

Nonetheless, there is an element of luck: there are all kinds of reasons that a publisher may turn down your story other than the fact that it sucks. But this is not really a big deal. If you've written one professional-quality novel, you can write another, and once you're writing at a professional level, it's only a matter of time before someone stands up and takes notice.

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