popmuze said:
So, matching this up with a previous statement of yours which went something like "the biggest reason your novel won't get published is because you give up on it too soon..." how can you tell if the novel you're currently sending around to agents belongs in that rarefied 1%.
Intuition?
Lots of detailed rejection letters?
Glowing comments from beta readers, teachers and friends?
More and more interest with each revision?
Conversely, can you get the idea it's going to fall somewhat short by the lack of requests for full manuscripts from agents?
Twenty out of twenty form rejections?
Critical comments from readers and friends?
Each revision seems to make things worse
The biggest reason your novel won't get published is because it isn't good enough. This is far and away the most common reason novels never find a home. But the number one reason
good novels don't find a home is because the writer gives up too soon.
The only real way to the whther your novel fits in the one percent or so that can make the cut is to keep submitting it as long as you can find anyone to look at it. Beta readers, friends, and techers mean zip. They might point out something you can change for the better here and there, but nothing means less where good/publishable is concerned that the opinion of beta readers, friends, and teachers.
Writers are usually lousy judges of their own work, and most other epople are any better at judging actual publishing quality. So send it out, and keep sending it out, until there's not a single place left to send it.
But another leading cause of a writer not getting published is allowing a first novel to get in the way of a second, a third, and a fourth novel. You should send a first novel out, and keep sending it out forever, but you should never expect it to sell, and you sure shouldn't have so much faith in it that you spend time and effort and money self-publishing it, rather than working as hard as possible on a second, a third, and a fourth novel.
It is just strange, to say the least, how many writers expect a first effort to be in the top one percent. How many painters do you know who would expect their first painting to be good enough to hang in a gallery? How many musicians do you know who would expect to be in teh top one percent the first time they made it all the way through a piece of music without an error? Yet writers expect a first novel to be better than 99% of everything out there.
Sometimes first novels do sell, but it's extremely rare, and for each first novel good enough to sell, somewhere around a thousand aren't good enough. Very few novels that make the cut are first novels. They're novels written by pro writers with a lot of other novels behind them, or they're the second, third, fourth, or fifth novel the writer has written. And when a true first novel does make the cut, it's very often from a writer who has some serious credits and other writing experience behind him.
But the only possible way to know is really to submit and keep submitting until there's not a place left to submit. Well, there is anotehr way to know, and that's to find a pro editor or writer in your genre who will look at it and hinestly tell you it stinks on ice. But you probably won't believe him, so submitting is the best way to get a real answer.
And while the submitting is going on you can't obsess about the first novel, you can't stress over it, etc. Odds are extreley high it's not good enough to make the cut, or to come anywhere near making the cut. So what? It's a first effort. What do you expect?
So you concentrate on writing a second, a third, a fourth, and a fifth novel. If you have any talent, you'll get better with each novel, and one of them will sell.