As a writer you have the option of sending your work direct to a publisher. But you should bear in mind that every publisher has a stack of unread manuscripts the size of a small skyscraper – this is the ‘slush pile.’ It’s very rare that they’ll find something in this pile that they want to publish; they much prefer to receive work via agents. But if you want to take your chances, there are a couple of things you can do to give yourself an advantage:

· Have a look in the Writer’s Handbook, which has a full list of publishers in Britain. For each publisher it will tell you what kind of work they publish and, importantly, whether they accept unsolicited manuscripts – this means work that has not been requested or sent by an agent.

· When you’ve picked out some suitable publishers, invest in a phone call to each of them. Ask who you should address your work to – it’s much more likely to be read if it’s addressed to a particular person in the office.

· Find out what you should send to the publishers; very few of them will want to receive a completed piece of work (time-consuming for them to read and expensive for you to send.) You can find out from the Writer’s Handbook or by ringing the publishers. They will often want a couple of sample chapters or poems, a synopsis of your work (a summary of what happens) and a bit of information about yourself.

If you are a poet, it is more likely that you will be approaching a smaller publisher. If so, it is perfectly fine to send your work directly to them, but still worth finding out in advance what they want from you.

Publishing is a big-buck business, and writers should know that all the major publishers see writers as a way to make money – and if they don’t think your work will sell in the thousands they won’t take the risk. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know!