Dear Bernard,

As a great fan of yours and as a writer of military history myself , I have found your writing advice page to be invaluable to amateur writers such as myself who want to take the next step to get published.

Whilst your advice to always find the right literary agent is certainly the best advice, I am still struggling to find the right one for me. Meanwhile I contacted one major publisher directly and have been invited to send in my work directly.

Whilst this is always promising news, I am struck by the idea that I wouldn’t know a crummy deal from a publisher if they slapped me in the face with it!

Can you give me (and hopefully other aspiring writers) a rough ball park on what might constitute a good deal and what might constitute a bad deal to the average new writer?

Sadly I have absolutely no basis for comparison!!! – Any thoughts or suggestions please?

Kind regards, as ever,

Ricky