Here's where I am:
What do New York agents and book publishers look for in new writers? Hello, I’m Bill Manville --former Village Voice columnist, an editor for Helen Gurley Brown at Cosmo, author of six books published by major New York houses -- one a Book-of-the-Month – and now a columnist for the New York Daily News. With that experience behind me, I teach a course designed to answer that question. Called, “Writing to Get Published,” there’s a 150 page Student’s Handbook to go with it. Students get it free, but if you write me at this address
whmanville@yahoo.com
I’ll email it free to you too.
The Handbook includes a long chapter on the ups and backs of self-publishing...a lot of it written by students who went that route themselves. They have nothing to sell, but go into how they made money, how they lost it, and things they would not do again. l
As for the course itself, here is what Michael Korda, Editor in Chief, Simon & Schuster, wrote about my qualifications to teach: “...the work I know best is your novel Goodbye, which I edited. What first attracted me was the dazzling prose; I was equally impressed by plot and characterization. A considerable literary accomplishment but also a Book of the Month choice, bringing an impressive price at paperback auction. What may also interest your students, I’ve heard you in discussion with writers like Joe Heller, Patricia Bosworth, Lois Gould and Gay Talese, and remember thinking more than once, Bill ought to be teaching it too.”
To learn more about the course itself, just hit this address:

http://www.writers.com/manville.html