Hi, ness -- What Derek already told you is painfully true. I've got several good friends who've been publishing in SFF for years, and not only is it hard to break in, the rules change constantly, and the ebook market has upended everything. The midlist is dead, and it's harder and harder to market because it's become a many-headed social-media hydra.
I'd STRONGLY recommend that you follow Kristine Rusch's blog on the writing business. She's done it all, and while she's in SFF, her advice is solid for virtually all markets (except maybe Romance, which is its own weird animal):
https://www.kristinekathrynrusch.com/
There's a lot to be said for *timing*, as well as
to whom you're marketing. The good news is that it can be done--I'm proof. The bad news is that it took 30 years to get published, from the time I first set out to write on the Gross One. Of course, what I was writing in at least those first 10 years (even with previous writing experience) didn't deserve to be published. Ha. Thank God it wasn't.
I didn't wind up getting my foot in the door via the regular channels. I'd actually put aside ATG and was trying to sell an SFF series about Dionysos and Ariadne (still hoping to sell that one). While trying to market the first book of the series, I stumbled across a review of Madeline Miller's
Song of Achilles, written by an English professor. She had many of the same quibbles with the book that I did (while beautifully written, WHY the two boys were friends/lovers was more assumed than established, characterization was sometimes shallow, and she glossed over/flinched from sex scenes). She also mentioned in the review that she'd just left her tenured prosition to pursue her real passion: to become an editor of fiction, and she was the new acquisitions editor for Riptide Press.
Bingo! I looked up the press: a small boutique publisher of LGBTQI romance, primarily. But on the website, they mentioned wanting to expand (which they since have) into gay-friendly novels that aren't strictly Romance. So I found her email address and emailed her about the Alexander novel. She asked to see it. I didn't hear back for ages, then out of the blue, she emailed to say she'd not read it herself (time) but had given it to several other editors/readers at the press who raved over it as being like Renault or Mary Stewart (their words, not mine, but I'll take the compliment). They wanted the novel. Boom.
That said, it still took a loooong time. Even once you get a contract offer, there's a lot of red tape (if you're smart) before signing, and while Riptide was growing (hiring staff, not firing them), first the editor, then the publisher have had some troubles (that very editor is no longer there) which slowed up getting anywhere even post-contract signing. But I stuck with them, and they've done right by me since. I have a great editor, I just turned in the final line edits for the first book (the original was so long, they cut it in two), and it's slated to come out now in June, rather than May (original release date). Then Fun Marketing TImes begin (and I hope folks on Pothos will give it a try, and--if you like it--review it on Goodreads or Amazon, and mention it to others who might; the best way to sell books is word-of-mouth).
So it boiled down to finding the right publisher, at the right time. It also helps to have a "platform": in my case, I'm a professor and specialist in Macedonia, so this will be the first [to my knowledge] ATG novel written by a Macedoniast, and Riptide jumped on that. But there are other sorts of platforms one could use. Say you wrote your novel from the point of view of one of the physicians in ATG's army, and you happen to be a medical doctor. That would be another type of platform. A platform is what do you, uniquely, bring to THIS novel?
It's also VERY very important to know what your own novel is *doing*, thematically, and what is its most likely audience? For instance, and despite the fact I actually write quite a few action and battle scenes, and have the military knowledge to do so, I probably won't get the same readers as those who like Christian Cameron or Steven Pressfield.
And not just for the homoerotic elements in the novel.
Dancing with the Lion is a
coming-of-age story, ergo its *primary* themes deal with interpersonal and internal growth. In short, it's a true "novel" not a "romance," in the old meaning of those terms. Novels are character-driven, romances are action-driven. That doesn't mean one can't have elements of the other, but it's a matter of focus. That's why I could sell a novel about a world conqueror to a Romance+ press. It's far *more* about fathers and sons (Alexander and Philip, Hephaistion and Amyntor), about learning what one can become (Alexander at Mieza, then Alexander's role as regent, etc.), and learning about love (Alexander and Hephaistion), as well as about the struggles of women in a deeply misogynistic society (while I don't have a lot of female POV characters--nature of the beast--there's a prominent sub-thread centered on Alexander's sister and mother).
Because I'm very clear on what the novel, or really novels, as Riptide cut it in half, are trying to do, I knew how to market it. I just had to find the right opportunity, and that was the long, at times deeply discouraging part. I wrote the first line in December of 1998. It won't see print until June of 2019. That's a bit of a long wait, but not unheard of. Marguarite Yourcenar apparently took 30 years to get out
Memoirs of Hadrian, too, although I'll be damn lucky if I'm even half as successful as she was.
But it's really important that you, as the writer, think about these sorts of things. What is your novel trying to say? What are the themes? What is the perspective? Who is your intended audience? Then you market it accordingly to agents and publishers. It's important to also look at other novels on the same subject. How is yours like or not like those?
Hope my personal story helps with both perspective and some ideas of how to move forward.