Ugh...bad news from the publishing world. Still...

They're complaining about getting published over at the Chron - more bad news that seems to suggest when you're a first-time novelist that the sanest thing you can do with your project is burn it and bury the ashes because no one - NO ONE - is accepting submissions from new comers.

This is actually a good thing.

Most of the bad news I've heard from other published authors falls under the category of "It's so hard - you gotta do X, Y and Z and there's still no guarantee that it'll work." I'm fine with that, although the feedback seems to suggest that, rather than spending the time and energy working with a system that is failing (the standard publishing biz) that I should be looking to figure out what works within whatever system is coming together.

As the above article points out, people are getting creative with ways to market their own projects and manuscripts. Some are even going the self-publishing route but I'll be skipping that for reasons I've already discussed. Some people are trying to manufacture a viral marketing campaign and it'll be interesting to see how that works (or if I can do the same). But the point is - nothing is a wrong answer. You cannot afford to be snooty about the book world and getting published anymore, not when Harper Collins and Random House are losing cash and laying off people.