I'm Jane to most people, That's just initials. Thanks for the heads up.

I prefer honesty, and currently get a ton of that from famous writers, so feel lucky in that sense. Still, so much more can be achieved, I just need an in. ONE IN!!!! Haha

I don't know if it's much help, but I can advise trying lots of different things, rather than staying on one course that may (rightly or wrongly) be blocked. For instance, when my children's books starting getting turned down, I decided to start again, almost from scratch, in Science Fiction. Went on a long US course, switched to short fiction, which I hadn't done before. From that experience, I learned that getting out there and trying as many different approaches as you can brings connections, ideas and, well, fizz to your work. And eventually, that can provide that 'in' you talk about it, even if it's not the in you might have been aiming for in the first place.

Terry, the book's wholly honest about where it comes from, and the bit about places to get editorial help is a tiny part of the whole. Things are changing fast, but then that's true of any book - and yet a book is still best place to present the amount and style info you need in an ordered way. I'd never say that you should take any source of information for gospel without bearing in mind where it comes from (the evangelistic self-publishers are coming from somewhere, just as much) and also keeping an eye on other sources of info.

Fair enough, and apologies for being snippy.

JS - if you haven't already seen it, a good place to get current info in a realistic but encouraging way is at Kristine Kathryn Rusch's blog. She's been highly successful at traditional and self-publishing, is a great teacher (as I discovered first hand) and has what many of us idealists lack, which is a very good grasp on how the business works. http://kriswrites.com/category/business/

Great stuff Terry!

Has anyone on here gone on to sell a novel and have success within the industry? Would love to hear how they got their break.

Quite a lot of people on WW have sold novels. In my case, the 'break' I got doesn't really apply today. It was back when an editor still had control over what she bought, when (in children's publishing at least) enough sales were assured (via libraries, mostly) for her to take a punt on a new, promising author. My book was rather idiosyncratic, with absolutely no commercial acumen attached. It also needed a lot of editing, the process of which taught me tons about how to write. Contrast with now, e.g. recently, I listened to a panel of editors (SF/Fantasy) talk about how they prefer a new author to have written the first three books, preferably in a series; they'll take the first one, see how it does (without, however, doing much promotion), may take the second but will give you back the third (without saying what you'd do with it); also, that you can't write across different genres, and should write the same kind of book all the time, ideally with the same characters.

Selling short fiction has been a liberating experience for me, in that it's still possible to do so while writing what you like. However, 'success' can't really be measured in hard cash where shorts are concerned!