Wow, can't believe I didn't see this forum before! Guess I've been too dead tired lately to notice. Anyway, I am a published novelist (working on number two now) and I'd be happy to share my experience after one small suggestion...save yourself the yearly $60 or so and just borrow the latest Writer's Market from the library if it's available. That's what I always did. Now, on to my personal experience. I started writing "Black Adder" (horror vampire story) back in 2000. It took me about a year to get it finished. Since I didn't have alot of money to get it copied over and over again to submit to lots of publishers, I began looking at who I thought would be most likely to be interested (i.e. small press publishers that accepted horror/fantasy). Vanity press was totally out of the question because A) I didn't have the money to spend on something like that, and B) I never have considered books that are vanity published to be of as high of quality as books from traditional publishers (after all, if you're paying them, you could print anything). My first query and sample was rejected. When I sent my manuscript to Publish America (www.publishamerica.com) it was accepted. This was only my second attempt. I got lucky. Anyway, so far my dealings with PA have been pretty good. They don't take months and months to respond to their authors and those who are interested in joining their ranks. You can coorespond through e-mail, and alot of the work is done through e-mail. They are a print on demand (not publish on demand) publisher, so they give more people a chance at becoming published writers. Anyway, rather than sound like I'm hyping it all up, I'll just suggest that if you're interested, to have a look at the site.