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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29864
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Another italian non-professional here, ciao :)

I have no experience in publishing, and I am going through similar questions myself. What I understood so far is pretty much what the others already said. I add a few more opinions:

- Don't rely too much on your friends' opinions. However good is their taste, they are your friends, and they will always read what you write with those lenses, encouraging you and being biased on the familiarity with the author more than with the book. If the book is terrible they will tell you, I'm sure, but their encouragement, useful as it can be, it's not objective.
- On the other hand, rely to a community of readers. There are many online communities and book clubs that you can find where to share your ideas and works with people with similar taste, especially if your novel falls into a genre. Science fiction and fantasy fans are very hard-core passioned about anything, so they could give you powerful feedback and support.
- Sending unsolicited manuscripts is free-of-cost and needs to be attempted in any case, but you must be aware that the odds are very low. Self publishing is a viable alternative way, but it requires a lot of self-promotion work to make your book emerge.
- Consider contests ("concorsi"): sometimes they are just scam, but they can be useful to get noticed by a community.

Original score: 6