I recently self-published a book with large print-on-demand publisher, iUniverse. (June of 2009, to be exact.) I was wondering if I could still send that manuscript to an agent to be published again with a traditional publishing house. I own 100% copyright to my book.
If that is alright, I was also wondering if I should mention the fact that my book had been previously published by a self-publishing house in my query letter.
Self-publishing is a "death-knell," but that’s the ONLY thing I agree with the first person on. NEVER lie to your literary agent or publisher. I’ll be anything that there are provisions in the agent and publisher contracts that will let them null and void your contract if they find out you didn’t disclose this information or that you lied to them. If I were a publisher or agent then I’d avoid at all costs anyone who has lied to me because that’s not a relationship I’d want to pursue.
It doesn’t matter if you own the copyright. ALL authors own the copyright to their works. Self-published books have a bad reputation for being low-quality crap that wasn’t good enough to get commercially published, so the writer decided to pay to publish their crap. I’m not saying that your work is crap, but reality is that most self-published books are pure crap: badly written, poor grammar, horribly edited, plot holes, and too many things wrong that make it unpublishable. Your book having just one of those issues will get it rejected by a real publisher.
Self-published books sell very, very few copies and it’s very rare that a real publisher will pick up and financially back a self-published book. There are exceptions like Eragon, but that is an exception. You will have to sell a few thousand copies of your book before a publisher will take it seriously. If you can prove that your book has sold well and that it has a market or fan base then a publisher might pick it up. Other than that, they won’t. Most agents won’t represent self-published books because they are hard to sell to publishers. Also, there’s a thing called "first publishing rights" that a publisher likes to have.
Unfortunately, some people want to jump the gun and self-publish. Maybe they think they’ll do a good job of selling, promoting, and marketing their book and want to keep 100% of the profits. Maybe they think they can self-publish and sell well over the Internet: Internet books sales are virtually non-existent for self-published works. For highly promoted and financed books like Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol, online sales will only be 5% of overall book sales; most book sales still come from book stores and super stores like Walmart. I don’t know why you self-published, but you’re beginning to see why it’s a bad idea unless you’ve written a niche non-fiction book. If you’ve written a novel then self-publishing is a waste of money.
To be honest, you’ve already self-published and this book is dead in the water unless you’ve sold thousands of copies. Start writing another book. If your next book doesn’t get picked up by a publisher then don’t self-publish it. It could be that your book might not make a good debut book, but might make a good 3rd or 4th book after you’re already published. Or, it could be that your book is inherently flawed to the point that it’s not publishable and that’s why you’re being turned down. You don’t want your name attached to crap. Just remember that every novel we write will not be published, and sometimes it takes writing many books before we write one that’s good enough to be published. Good luck.
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums
[EDIT] I just looked through your previous questions and you’ve been asking questions here about self-publishing for almost a year. It seems like you might have jumped into self-publishing without truly researching the publishing business? Before you try to get anything else published I HIGHLY suggest you start vising writer’s forums so that you can learn how publishing works. Try the forum linked above, because many members there are author published through real publishers and many are people who are currently working on novels that they hope to get published. You’ll get great information from those who have been there, done that.
Don’t mention anything about self-publishing. It’s a death-knell. I would do some thorough searches on agent blogs and find out what their guidelines are. There has been a lot of discussion of self-publishing over the last year on agent sites. Keep following the links.
Also make sure you have omitted spelling errors in your manuscript. Alright is not a word, and you don’t want mistakes like that in your query letters.
Good luck.
Don’t listen to the person who said to just not mention that you’ve already self-published the book. (But do listen to their suggestion to read about this topic on agent blogs, it’s been covered.)
But as far as not telling them– What happens when the agent searches your name online and finds the book? Then you’ll look sneaky or clueless. If you do try to submit this book, be upfront about its history. You want the agent to be upfront with you, so do them the same courtesy.
The issue is not exactly with the copyright of your work, either. It’s with publication rights, and your first publication rights are gone. A publisher buying the rights to publish your book will need to know this. (One reason they don’t like buying already self-published books is the confusion it causes when they bring it out but all the websites are listing the old version still, for example. Next time hold off on the self-publishing route if you plan to submit it elsewhere.)
But if it were me, I would start with writing a new work and submitting that to agents. Then at a later point, mention this one and see what they think could be done with it.
Mia is right.
If you can convince a publisher that your book is good but hasn’t had the chance to reach the audience it might deserve, then you might get a second bite at the cherry. Also, the self-published work gives you some credibility, but you have to capitalise on it by having something new to sell.
I never advise serious writers to self-publish.