getting a first nbovel accepted by a literary agent or publisher

  They say that authors have a 500-1 chance of getting a first novel published. I don’t know how true that is, though I do know that having been published before in another field will at least get you read if your presentation is neat, conforms to the required submission guidelines and is accompanied by an appealing introductory letter. But when you consider that most publishers won’t take you without an agent now, at least in Britain, and most agents receive thousands of manuscripts a year and accept only a handful for representation, it isn’t hard to see why the odds are stacked against new writers.