Welcome to my perfumed garden

"Have you got a publisher lined up?
::Grasps head in hands - Groans in helpless despair:: Oh, I wish!
Selling a book even to an agent, let alone a publisher is so so hard. I'm not sure how much people out there know, unless they've been through it themselves, but more than 99% of all manuscripts will never get published, not because they're not good (tho many, I'm sure, aren't ::G::), but they just don't fit the currently fashionable profile, or whatever.
9x out of 10, the manuscripts of the last novel I tried to get published were sent back unread. Prizewinning scriptwriters have similar problems - believe me, I have experience of that too. ::VBG::

One well-known example from a writer's website;
"Just in case you don’t know the much-told story, it is worth record-
ing that the first Harry Potter book was rejected by every major
publisher in London (some sources say as many as 20); and when
it was eventually bought by Bloomsbury, the one publisher who
showed the smallest degree of interest, they paid but a small sum of
money for it (sources say between £2,000 and £3,000). Clearly,
none of the ‘experts’ who read the book in manuscript, and rejected
it, had the slightest inkling of the massive money-making machine
which they held in their hands."
It's worse than that, JKR couldn't even get an agent to take the book on - her agency; Christopher Little, were returning her ms unread, till their secretary, bored on her lunch hour, picked HP off the slush pile and thought; 'hmm. this is good...' ::Returns to grasping head in hands - Groaning in helpless despair::

And yet, we still write. Someone, please tell me why? RAOTFL.