Here are some eye opening statistics about just how hard it is to get published, from a recent panel I attended featuring several New York literary agents and major publishers.

The average literary agent sees 30-35 query letters per day

The average fiction editor with a major publishing house vets 6 - 12 manuscripts per week

The average literary agent has an active pool of 40 - 65 projects circulating at any time

The average editor has about 6-8 books in process

In two years, one editor at Random House had received 860 proposals from agents; she published 19 - slightly more than 2%

If this is less than encouraging, don't fret. Just remember that getting published is all about the right book being in the right place at the right time - and it happens all the time. Somewhere between 60K and 100K books get published every year (in all genres.) So someone, somewhere is making some deals.

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Tags: Getting published, writer's tips, publishing a book, getting a book deal

Comments

[John Vonhof]

The number of books published in 2004 was 195,000. Many of those titles are Print-on-Demand (POD) which will never sell more than a few copies. The point is that authors need to study their market and have a marketing plan--after determing that, in fact, the world needs their book.

[Mike Duffy]

Isn't this a good argument for self-publishing (and self-promoting) a book?

Interestingly, a similar problem exists for wineries, with tens of thousands of new wines released each year.