What is involved in marketing a novel?

A writer is someone who writes. An author is someone who has been paid to write. You're still a writer, even if you're looking to be an author.

Here are the steps you take:

1. Finish the story.

2. Go back to fix the major and minor screw ups. (Like the main characters had brown eyes in chapter 1, but green eyes in chapter 8, you told the same thing twice, because you forgot you had already written that before, or you jumped over a couple of steps in the story to save space, but then you realize you need to show those steps to.)

3. Learn how to write a darn good story by reading books about how to do that. (Should have been step one, but hey, you already have the darn-good story, so don't peter out on the momentum you've already established.)

4. Now armed with this new knowledge, go back to revise your story to fit within all you've learned.

5. Revise, revise, revise, and then edit, edit, edit, until you just can't make it prettier.

6. Find other writers also working on their novels to critique their stories, while they critique yours.

7. Go back over your story, based on their critiques. (Revise, revise, revise, and then edit, edit, edit, until you just can't make it prettier, again.

8. Repeat 6 and 7, until they start nitpicking the most minor of things, because you can't ever make a novel perfect, or agreeable to everyone.

9. By the time you do all that stuff, you'll start learning just enough information about the publishing end of the business, to figure it out yourself most of the way, and for the stuff you don't get, you'll know enough other writers to ask questions. (This is going to be 3-5 years from now, if you hustle...longer if you dawdle.)