Getting started

Five links about getting started in business in your artform. Well, I suppose a novelist is essentially a freelancer, sole trader, responsible for paying their own tax and stuff, so I guess this works. What do we have?

www.authors.org.nz/
The New Zealand Society of Authors is usually a good place to start for anything to do with this. And they have a page full of links specifically on getting published:
www.authors.org.nz/wawcs0137983/Getting-Published.html
They have resources about all the important bits, like Manuscript Assessors and Editors, Literary Agents, Publishers, Private/Indie Publishing, Digital Publishing, Magazines Journals and E-zines. I don't just mean more links. They also have well written resources of their own.

Then there's a specific genre site, www.romancewriters.co.nz which is the place to go for those whose books focus around a the beginning and development of a romantic relationship with a happy ending. There's not a lot on here specifically about getting into business exactly, but they provide further links, including to publisher Random House NZ, and hold conferences to enable authors, agents, publishers to network with each other.

www.specficnz.org is the site for Speculative Fiction Writers of New Zealand. In other words, science fiction, the future, etc. They have a link to the New Zealand Association of Manuscript Assessors...

www.elseware.co.nz/NZAMA/ is the site for them.

www.penguin.co.nz/getting-published is the kind of thing one should probably look at before sending off one's unsolicited manuscript, in this case, to Penguin NZ. NZ is lucky that publishers here will consider any unsolicited manuscripts at all, in most other places you need to be accepted by an agent first, who will then talk to publishers on your behalf. There's a similar page for Random House NZ, www.randomhouse.co.nz/about/manuscripts.aspx

So actually not a lot that is NZ specific, but it's covered so well by NZSA not a lot more may be needed. There are, of course, about a billion international sites.

The basic road seems to be this:

Get manuscript assessed, edited, etc by someone who knows what they're doing. Rewrite. Perhaps go through this process a few times, so your thing has a chance of actually being good enough to be considered by anyone in the first place.
No, it will not likely be picked up and then you get an editor, if you can't get it picked up in the first place. First projects are rarely as good as the author thinks they are. The idea and potential may be good, but the execution takes years to master.

Research, contact, submit to suitable looking literary agents and/or publishers.
Do your homework. Does this publisher even take unsolicited manuscripts? If they do, when, where, how? What are the guidelines? What don't they take? There will be similar guidelines on the sites of lit agents. As publishers and agents get billions of unsolicited things, most of which will be bad, or simply not what they want because the author didn't bother to read their guidelines properly, make sure that you do.

If you get feedback, take it seriously.
If you get interest but they want to edit and change a few things, take that seriously. Don't be the author who couldn't get his work published because he refused to cut any extraneous detail. These people know what they are doing and are making suggestions for a reason.

Be on the lookout for competitions to enter, like short story comps. Most of these will include opportunities to be published in some way, and then you have something published and you have a better chance of getting something else published.

Register as a sole trader with the IRD. Novelists pay their own tax off the royalties and advances they get from publishers. So register, and then decide how you will keep track of your tax over the course of the year so as to pay it and fill out a tax form without headaches and financial hardship at the end of the financial year. Consider what business costs you can claim against your final tax. Start keeping recipts, because they will likely audit you at some point. www.ird.govt.nz 

www.writersworkshop.co.uk/How-To-Get-Published.html
is a British site, and has an excellent, and detailed, outline of the process, including info about putting together a pack of info about your book, cover letters, etc.

janefriedman.com/2012/01/28/start-here-how-to-get-your-book-published/
has something similar, but more general, full of things to consider before you solicit, and if you are unsuccessful.