Chapter and verse

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Best-selling novelist David Baldacci did not sell a single manuscript for 15 years.

Few people knew that after a full day of work, the trial attorney rushed downstairs to his home office at about 10 every night to write for another four hours. For years, he wrote in obscurity with no feedback except rejection slips, he says.

"If you love to write, you'll keep going," says Mr. Baldacci, a Fairfax County resident.

Mr. Baldacci published his first book, "Absolute Power," in 1996 with the help of his literary agent, Aaron Priest Literary Agency in New York City. Since then, he's kept the same agent, publishing nine additional national and international best-sellers, including his latest mystery thriller, "Hour Game," in 2004.

Mr. Baldacci and area authors, writing instructors, editors and literary agents provide advice for writers who want to publish that first book.

"You have to develop a very thick skin because you will be bombarded with rejection slips. Trust me, I have a boxful," says Robert L. Giron, a published poet and the editor and publisher of Gival Press LLC, an independent publishing house of fiction, nonfiction and poetry in Arlington. He is a professor of English at the Takoma Park campus of Montgomery College, a community college with three locations in Maryland.

Mr. Giron recommends that fiction writers and poets first publish in journals, magazines, newspapers and anthologies before trying to publish a book. Publishing in smaller media is a way to develop a portfolio and give credence to a writer's work, he says.

"I look for somebody who has a resume that would indicate to me that they're serious about writing," Mr. Giron says.

Editors favor manuscripts from literary agents they trust or writers with whom they already are familiar, says Stephen Goodwin, professor of English at George Mason University in Fairfax. He has authored three novels, including his most recent, "Breaking Her Fall," published in 2003.

"Unsolicited manuscripts are not likely to succeed or get much of a reading, if they get read at all," Mr. Goodwin says. "There are so many writers that the famous slush pile doesn't exist."