Getting published

Great post at Neil Gaiman's journal on getting an agent (via reddit). Covers much more ground than just agents. Read up. I liked these best:

There is no substitute for writing a book that people want to buy and read. If you can do that, you can get published. If you can't, no clever workaround will help, because we can't force people to buy and read books they don't like.

Be obviously and extraordinarily good.

The first point above is common sense, the most uncommon of all senses. Please don't flatter yourself by imagining that it may hurt your creativity.

On the second, a few years of practice should take you there (10 years of continuous practice, if you want to know precisely. If you haven't got there, you can always write in your blog about how you failed, and who knows, you may afterall make it... So cheer up).