Get your novel published!

There was another of those "contests" - advertised on FB this time - and someone was even answering questions. Oooh! Exciting!
Not.
Read the fine print. Think about what it actually says.
No, I haven't given up on the idea of publication but I would go the self-publishing route and all the learning and extra work involved before I succumbed to one of those supposed "competitions". 
I know there are an awful lot of people out there who have written the great, best-selling novel and they can't get published. There are even people who have simply written good books that others would enjoy reading and they can't get published either.  
I look along the shelves in the library and often wonder how people got things published. What about the book I read recently? It was by someone I know slightly so I finished it. He's bound to ask at some point what I thought of it. (I've been studiously avoiding him while I try and think of a diplomatic answer.) It was published by a reputable enough publishing house but the plot doesn't hang together. There are great gaps in it. And the name of the hero's dog changes half way through. Someone didn't pick that up at the editing stage - or was it even edited? 
What about that knitting book I was asked to review? It looked nice but someone should have asked a knitter to look at the patterns  before they accepted it for publication. The yarn estimates were way out and the knitters I know (and I know many) would have had great difficulty in understanding the instructions. There had obviously been no "test knitting" done. Even worse there had obviously been no proof reading. There is just a little difference between casting on 28 sts or 82sts - yes?
And yet these things get published. 
Last year I was looking at picture books in the bookshop. I needed a present for a young friend.
     "Take a look at the new...." one of the staff told me. Something told me that she had a reason for asking. 
The author is well known. She made her name on one book in particular, a book I don't actually like although it would be considered almost heresy to say that. Since then she has gone on to write other picture books. They sell well. Her name and the first book still sells these.
I read the new book - after all reading a picture book to oneself only takes a moment or two. Then I put the book back on the spinner stand and went on to find a book I wanted to give.
    "What did you think?" I was asked as I went to pay for the book I had chosen.
    "Well I wouldn't choose it but I suppose people will. Is it selling well?"
    "Yes. Her books always do."
We looked at each other. We didn't need to say it. One book has become a "classic" through a series of fortunate events. She knew the right people at the right time too. That first book isn't bad by any means but it isn't as good as many other picture books. Anything else by the same author is unthinkingly and uncritically labelled "good".
I thought of all this yesterday after reading about the "novel contest".  Somewhere in all the entries there might be a novel or two or even three that are worthy of publication. The problem is they are never likely to reach the bookshop and library shelves. They might already have been passed by or they may never have been submitted because their authors have been told the traditional route won't happen to them - and they believe it. So the "novel contest" and the "poetry contest" people pounce.
No, I don't want my work "published" as an e-book or two or more on Amazon for 99p or 99c.  At very least I will get it professionally edited and try a new round of agents.