A fantasy author, Jim C. Hines, did a survey recently where he asked published writers to give information on their path to publishing their first book. He has 2 posts up about the results so far, and I think he's working on at least one more post.

http://www.jimchines.com/2010/03/novel-survey-results-part-i/
http://www.jimchines.com/2010/03/novel-survey-results-part-ii/

I thought it was interesting because it shows how different everyone's path is. Some people got their first book published, some finally made it with their fourth book.

What do you think, anything surprising here?