The key to the publication of a novel or a collection of short fiction is to first get your work noticed. For those of you who hate submitting to literary journals, I have to tell you, that that is one of the only ways for writers to get noticed. A writer who has ambitions, should submit constantly to journals. This is where many publishers look for fiction writers. It is a great place to display your talent, and the editors are looking there. However, I have also heard that it is a special thing if a journal is called by a publisher for the information about a featured writer. But, hey, if your good, maybe your work will woo them.
What do you submit? Submit excerpts from your novel if that is what you want to promote. Look over the novel for prominient events. Find a place that allows a reader to gain enough background information to understand the excerpt. Find a good place to end it. You would be surprised how some novel excerpts work well as short stories. Tell the editor of the journal you are submitting to in your cover letter that your piece is an excerpt. This way they know you have a novel, and can tell that to potential publishers.
If you are wanting to publish a collection of short stories, you have a somewhat harder task. There are not many publishers looking for ficiton collections. It's just a fact. However, you can submit any story from your collection to journals. Make sure the stories in the collection have common characters or themes. Have several of them published in journals before sending a query to an agent or publisher. This will help hype up your work.
The preceding is really self promotion. It is a lot of mailing and hard work. However, it has to be done for you to get noticed. The literary journals are where it is at. There is an alternative route if you are finding it too hard to get noticed through self promotion. You can get an agent. Remember though, you must also convince the agent that your work is good, so submitting to journals is still not a bad idea.
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