Well the steps on the way to the book signing in your local Barnes & Noble or Borders is just as mannered.  Almost always, the pattern is the same.  

The love part comes first.  You write a book – or in the case of non-fiction, probably a lengthy and detailed proposal for a book – about which you feel passionately.  You care about the characters and their story, or the issue and your take on it, and you write the very best possible book you can, with attention paid to all the things that make your work professionally worthy:  The proper length for the kind of work it is.  Careful grammar and punctuation and spelling.  Nothing left to chance, every fact checked (applies as much to novels as to non-fiction).  Correctly set out on the page using proper ms guidelines.  Above all, exquisitely polished, however many rewrites that demands.  And surely you have over your desk that pithy truth of G.B. Shaw’s that all writing is rewriting.

Then, having produced this jewel, you must find an agent.

I’m not going to tell you how.

Which means I’m not going to tell you how here, because I blog on that topic over on Bill’s site, www.agentresearch.com

But an agent you must have.  The days are long gone when authors could send mss and proposals directly to publishers to be vetted by clever young women (mostly) who majored in English and were marking time until they got married.  It does not work that way any longer.

With very rare exceptions, the publisher’s slush pile of what we used to call “over the transom” submissions has disappeared.  It has been replaced by the agent’s slush pile.  And you will probably pay your dues by landing in one or more, languishing there sometimes for many weeks, only to eventually receive a preprinted note that tells you one of those lies such as we’re not taking on new authors, or we’re not the right agent for this type of work.  Whatever.  It all means the same thing:  You didn’t make the cut.  Not here and now with this ms.

Until finally the day will come when, with a combination of real talent and more than a little luck, you will have representation. 

Could be that the first time it will not be a match made in heaven.  This is a subject on which I could write reams.  Indeed, one way or another I have.  But cutting to the chase, my current agent is my third; Henry Morrison and I have worked together for over twenty years.  He’s a brilliant first reader, a terrific negotiator, and a loyal friend and supporter.   I am also hugely grateful to Danny Baror, the agent who sells the translation rights to all my work.  Danny is tireless in pursuing every possible market that will widen a writer’s audience and increase the health of her bottom line. 

I wish for you that you find equally good representation, however many times it takes to get it right.

Meaning, you will eventually have a publisher. 

Who will assign you an editor.  A process requiring yet larger helpings of luck, since there are good ones and not so good ones out there.  I’ve been fortunate and had some of the best, none better than Sydny Miner at Simon & Schuster.  Syd has edited City of Dreams, Shadowbrook, and City of Glory.  I have mentioned in each book that she gives me back a better book than I give her, and that’s true. 

And no, your agent’s job is not finished when the book is sold and you are working with an editor.  It almost always takes at least a year for a book to go from sale to publication and many decisions remain to be made during that year.  Sometimes you’ll have to fight your corner to be published well and with muscle.  (The first step in making sure your book doesn’t fall into a black hole that leads straight to the remainder tables.)  Your agent should be the knight you send to do battle with the forces of evil (more like stupidity most of the time) who stand between you and the success you’ve worked so hard to achieve.  

She will don her armor, aim her lance, and head straight into the fray. 
About the book cover.
The jacket blurb.
The editing.
The publication date.
The (inevitable) pittance they are assigning by way of an advertising/marketing budget.

You won’t win many of these battles, hell, unless you become a household name with a guaranteed spot on the bestseller lists, you might not win any.  But it’s your agent who should as far as possible cushion you from the rough edges of the process. 

Bringing you finally to the moment you’ve been waiting for and working toward, the day you walk into a bookstore and see your book on the shelf.  Or even better, stacks of your books at the front of the store.