Authors must face publishing reality. What ever that publishing reality is. Years ago, I ploughed headlong into my fiction thinking it would get published someday. But when I got rejection slips saying my fiction didn’t fit their publishing needs, I withered a bit, and learnt that I just can’t go in there and get my work published. If I want to get published with a certain publisher, it’s about knowing them very well, and catering the work to their publishing needs. This is the publishing reality I am talking about. It may even entail me reading what other authors have done with that publisher. It’s no easy path to getting the book deal. This may seem obvious, but to know it, rather than sense it, are two different things.