Getting published has never been easy. It has always been a struggle to get past the 'gatekeepers' of the literary world - the publishers themselves and literary agents.

It's not quite such a struggle if you have made a name in another field. If you are an acknowledged expert, securing a book contract for a non-fiction work shouldn't be difficult. And, increasingly, even knowledge, expertise or talent are not strictly required. In our celebrity-obsessed culture, fame is enough of an endorsement to get your name on a book cover (even if none of the words between the covers are yours).

For newcomers, without fame or notoriety, it's a different story. They are consigned to that dread dark realm of the publishing universe - the slush pile. There are two schools of thought on this.

Some believe that the competitive, survival-of-the-fittest environment of the slush pile weeds out the weak. Only the most professional, worthy and viable works make it through. It's a natural form of filtration that has worked for centuries and ensures quality.

Others maintain that the slush pile is most often sifted by inexperienced interns, or work-experience relatives of the publisher or agent who wouldn't recognise an original work if they were beaten about the head with it.

Both arguments have their merits.

It's a risk

I've been a professional writer all my working life. That's 28 years so far. During that time, I've done stints as editor of various publications, from trade journals through to glossy corporate magazines. In that role, I've been at the receiving end of writers seeking work. And I hired very few journalists based purely on an unsolicited enquiry or speculative feature. Most of the writers I used for the first time came to me by recommendation. That's not to say I wouldn't use complete unknowns: but when I did, it would be on a low-risk assignment, where I could easily replace the article with another should the quality fail to meet our standards.

The risk for both literary agents and publishers in the book world is much higher.

An agent has to invest a huge amount of effort and resources in a new writer. Getting it wrong is wasteful and expensive. Few really have the spare capacity - financially or in terms of time and manpower - to expend on a venture they think is at all risky.

The same goes for publishers, perhaps to a lesser extent - though that's hardly relevant these days as so few publishers (and none of the major ones) take on writers directly. Publishers have cannily shifted the burden of dealing with unsolicited approaches on to agents.

It is, perhaps, not surprising if literary agents have a jaundiced view of the slush pile, or if they delegate the onerous task of wading through it to an office junior. (That's not universally the case, by the way: I'm currently hawking a manuscript around agents and have received rejections - many of them kind and encouraging - from the agents themselves who have clearly read the manuscript, judging by the specifics of their replies.)

One agent was interviewed recently and when asked how many manuscripts in the slush pile would actually be worth reading he replied "None!". All but one of his clients came to him via routes other than the slush pile.

So the traditional route to being published is flawed. It can work, and I believe that the process of engaging a literary agent and being published by a mainstream publishing house is still the best way into print. It is the only route likely to sustain you as a professional writer.

But what do you do when it doesn't work? What are your options if you are not already famous and can't seem to make your way out of the slush pile?

Do it yourself

Self-publishing evades the gatekeepers. It allows you to go around them, straight to the reading public.

It might seem as though self-publishing is the method of last resort - strictly for those unable to make it in 'real' publishing. In this Internet age, I'm not sure that's true.

As I mentioned in my introductory blog, the Internet provides a one-to-many mechanism that is being exploited by creative people of all kinds - including musicians, artists and writers. It offers a new model for expression and distribution. We will soon see a generation for whom the Internet is the natural medium for their work, their first choice, not their last. Traditional models of publishing might soon seem cumbersome and outdated: the music business has already learned this to its cost.

So, many writers are embracing the Internet, not resorting to it. They are self-publishing using websites and Internet-based marketing to sell books and online POD services to fulfill the orders.

Whether this is an appropriate approach depends very much on the book and on your expectations, I believe.

Like I said, I'm approaching literary agents with my most recent novel. I will also go that route with several others projects currently in the pipeline - fiction and non-fiction. The same goes for Trish, who has several non-fiction books in development.

I decided to self-publish Lady Caine for several reasons.

I originally submitted the novel to agents, one of whom became very enthusiastic. He met with me, asked me to rewrite a couple of scenes (which I did and they were much improved) and sent it out to several publishers. Their responses were along the lines of "too wacky" or "we don't know what genre this is". Anyway, it didn't take.

The manuscript was consigned to a dusty, rarely visited corner of my hard drive from whence I plucked it a few weeks ago. I re-read it. Liked it. Thought "there must be other people out there who will like this" and so decided to self-publish. I rewrote a few scenes, filed off some rough edges and gave it a nice polish. But I couldn't stand the thought of hawking it around agents again; and besides, I want to put my energy into the current novel.

So I'm not betting my career on Lady Caine - I just want to share it with the world in the belief that it will bring enjoyment to those who read it.

Trish and I are also considering self-publishing several of the non-fiction works we have in development. Our reasoning there is that they are niche titles that won't interest agents or larger publishing houses. We're happy to make low-volume sales - especially given that self-publishing gives you a much larger slice of the cover price than traditional royalties.

We've set up 'WebVivant Press' as our imprint. Our shop front will be this website, plus others we create for specific book projects.

In the meantime, as professional writers with careers to maintain, we will continue to pester agents with the more commercial projects. After all, there's no reason why self-publishing should be an all-or-nothing venture. Why not have the best of both worlds?