eBooks

Welcome!

We have various sub-forums for specific questions, it'd probably be best to ask this question in E-Publishing.

Congrats. Since you have only 2 posts, I'll assume you're new and welcome you anyways. Welcome!

Welcome to AW. Hope you enjoy your stay with us.
How do you like your popcorn?

If you go to the bottom of the page to the 'forum jump' you can scroll down and find all the areas of this place. After you post 50 posts you can use the SYW areas to get help there. The password for some of the areas is…..vista. A word to the wise, it would be a good idea to participate first in helping others before you think about posting your own work. After you have been around here for awhile, then post something of your own for help. Good luck.

Hi there as well!

Moving thread to e-publishing
Please keep your hands and feet inside the thread while it's in motion. Thank you

It's extremely rare for a traditional publishing house to want anything which has already been published (in any format). So no, I wouldn't bother querying agents or publishers with it. Write your next book and if your self-pubbed books sells well, say so in the query letter for that one.

This isn't an epublishing question; it's a self-publishing question.

Don, I don't know why you just sent me a PM asking me exactly the same questions as you've asked in this thread, but in future please don't double up on messages like that: it wastes people's time. Thanks.

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, so I'll assume you've self-published your Kindle edition and are asking if you can now find a trade publisher for a hardback edition of your book. If that's the case then this is neither an e-publishing question nor a self-publishing one: please let me know and I'll move this thread once again to a more appropriate part of AW. If I've got it wrong and you're asking if you're able to self-publish a hardback edition then your answer is yes.

But please note for future reference: it's far better to research things like this before you take action, and not after. It usually gives you more options.

girlyswot said:

It's extremely rare for a traditional publishing house to want anything which has already been published (in any format). So no, I wouldn't bother querying agents or publishers with it. Write your next book and if your self-pubbed books sells well, say so in the query letter for that one.

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I believe this is true.

I was planning to turn on of my books into an eSerial for an experiment. I chose one of my completed novels that I had submitted to about 30 agents and heard from close to ten of them (rejection to my queries).

Months have passed. I figured no one was interested. So when I decided to use it, I sent messages to the agents I liked most out of those I submitted to, thinking to give them at least a week to let me know if they were interested in the book.

Meanwhile, after sending those messages, I started preparing the novel into eSerial format. 30,000 words per part.

The week passed. I was literally a couple days from publishing the first part on Amazon...had the .mobo files done...the covers done.

And then one of the agents requested a full...and asked me to hold off on the eSerial release.

I still want to do the eSerial option as an experiment but may have to use a different book. The problem is, I think my other books are going to sell traditionally as well.

Sooooo...now I'm working on writing a true eSerial...a story intended from the start to be just that.

I'll be talking about it more in the near future, but the likely title is "Magic Rising".

livetojibe said:

I appreciate the reply. I'll try to answer but it would be helpful if you view it thru an "extreme newbie" filter. Most of what you take for granted about how this site works is totally unclear to me and accepted etiquette completely unknown.

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Livetojibe, I assume you were responding to my earlier post: if there are lots of comments between yours and the one you're responding to, it makes it clearer for everyone if you quote the message you're responding to. There's a "quote" button in the bottom right corner of every post which helps you do that.

The second question was generated because I saw something somewhere on the site saying directing questions directly to a super moderator was a fine idea and someone had already told me I'd posted in the wrong spot.

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Ah, I understand. Yes, AW is so big it can be confusing but if you give it a bit of time you'll soon get the hang of it. I recommend that you start a thread in the Newbies section of AW if you haven't done so already and do read the Newbies Guide, which will help you in all sorts of ways.

If you have a question about how AW works, then yes, contact a moderator: if you have a more general question, like the one you started this thread with, then you're better off staying out in the open with it. OK?

As for researching first, I did, sort of. Hard to research what you don't know.

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I don't suppose anyone researches what they already know. But yes, research is hard work: that doesn't mean we can avoid it.

You'll find a lot of information, help and advice here, though, so you're in the right place.

I originally only looked to see if I gave up any rights by self publishing which as I understand it, I don't.

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Well, you give up your first rights, for a start. And there are plenty of publishers who only want those first rights.

I have read enough success stories about authors starting with an eBook, having success, and then a traditional publisher picks them up. With that information, it doesn't scream to me that in general publishers will not want to have anything to do with you if you have published the book as an eBook.

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Lots of those stories are hyped, exaggerated, and pretty inaccurate. And compared to the number of writers who get their trade publishers via the usual submit-and-wait route, the number who find them via self-publishing is miniscule.

There are publishers who might still be interested, but there are plenty others who won't.

My question now can be refined to this (I hope it's refined). My ebook has sold so far only 10 copies (not really unexpected). In my logical mind (I'm currently an engineer), if I un-publish it, take off Amazon, does it really matter to a publisher? And if so, why? It would seem to me no damage done; only ten people in the world looked at the book.

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You can't un-publish your book. You can stop selling it on Amazon but there will still be a record of it there, there will still be records of its publication, and it will still have been published. If you find an agent or publisher willing to take it on you will have to tell them that it has been previously published; but you can qualify that by saying that only ten people bought it.

The problem with that is that you'll be telling them, indirectly, that only ten people were interested enough in your book to buy it, which implies that it's not going to garner enough interest to make it commercially successful--which some are going to consider a big strike against your book.

PeteDutcher said:

The week passed. I was literally a couple days from publishing the first part on Amazon...had the .mobo files done...the covers done.

And then one of the agents requested a full...and asked me to hold off on the eSerial release.

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Wow, congrats on that. But how long did you wait? If it was only two months, there's plenty of agents who state outright that their response time to queries is longer than that. Many of the "no response means no" types also tell you when you can assume a no. (Though not all, which is a pet peeve of mine.)

Anyways, unless you were dealing with the last group, you shouldn't have had to guess when agents were done with the query.

If the editor or agents reads it and thinks you are the next Grisham, they won't care.

But editors and agents tend to be slightly more pragmatic and they are more likely to read 50 manuscripts that month that are all reasonably promising. So it pays not to give them reasons to choose someone else.

Keep in mind no one knew Grisham was the next Grisham before sales took off on The Firm.

There are no rules. But there are typical results and what you're suggesting is atypical enough that it might as well not even be considered, much like winning Lotto is not a good business plan to consider. If it happens great, but you shouldn't risk your day job on the possibility.

The book is now published. You should consider it pretty well over as far as trade publishing goes. Maybe you win Lotto down the road if your self publishing venture is atypical but I wouldn't recommend pursuing the typical querry routine with that book for an agent or trade publisher. If Lotto happens, it'll come to you.

You've self-published. Anything after that is a reprint. Most publishers aren't willing to shell out for a reprint unless there are significant sales numbers that show it has feet.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6666425&postcount=13

If you have further questions on a thread you've started, it'd be a good idea to keep them in that thread rather than starting another one. Mods get cranky when they have to clean house.

First rights are just that - the first publication of a book. It doesn't matter if it's in print from a commercial house, or self-published, the fact remains that a version of the book has already existed in the wild, for sale, and did not do well.

Considering the extra work you've done on the MS, this isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, but you still have to inform the agent and publisher. Even if they agree that the new version is different enough to be considered a new and separate work, you're no longer a "debut" writer, and can't be marketed as such. That's leverage you can't get back.

Once a book is published it has a SBN assigned to it. That is for the life of the book.

It is my understanding that even if you have added/altered/changed the first book it still has that number.

When you see or get a copy of a movie that is called a directors cut, it is one that has many extra scenes in it. It is still the same movie, but with extra stuff. It is not a remake.

Several old time writers that have died have told of keeping some of their work done in short stories but finally added them to a full length novel. The shorts were published. So, I'm not real sure how that works. (Someone may remember us talking about who some of these guys were. It was a couple of years ago.)

I think if the book was revised that heavily it might not count.

Many times a novella has been published in a journal only to be turned into a novel a few years later. I'd say the same rule applies here. Call your first one a novella, say the new one is a novel based on the novella. Shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Personally, I would say upfront that it was self published and that you pulled it when you realized your mistake in doing so. (even if you don't think it is a mistake) otherwise you risk alienating an agent or publisher. A lie by omission kind of thing. It sets up a very poor relationship with your publisher or agent and would be grounds to as you say tell you to take the novel they loved on Monday somewhere else on Friday once they find out you did not give them the full history of the novel.

Now, if things have been changed to the point of it is no longer the same story, name changed etc., then it is based on that earlier work, but is no longer the same book and would not have the same ISBN number either. I've sold novels based on short stories previously published.

livetojibe said:

I've approached this question in another forum but didn't get an answer I can buy so I'm trying it here.

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I get that you didn't like the answers you got first time round. But starting a new thread, asking exactly the same question, and hoping to get a different set of answers, isn't going to work. I've merged this with your previous thread. Please don't do this again.

Let's assume I am fortunate enough to get my 90,000 word book to an agent and the agent likes it; likes it a lot. Likes it so much it is the one in one hundred that makes it's way to the publisher and the publisher likes it.

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Far fewer than one manuscript out of every hundred in an agent's slush pile will reach an editor's desk: that one per cent is probably the amount that moves past the query stage.

At that point, the publisher learns that there was a 50,000-word version self published as a Kindle for two weeks which sold 11 copies. The book was pulled from Amazon. Clearly the two versions share little but the basic plot. The quality of the current book has been established as being worthy of publishing.

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My bold.

How is this clear? All the publisher knows is that the book has already been published. At which point many publishers will refuse the book: they want to publish new books, not books which have already been published by other publishers.

I have been told elsewhere that the stint on Amazon has spoiled any chance of getting this book published and I don't see why.

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No, you've been told that there are publishers who won't want your book. This is what you were advised:

girlyswot said:

It's extremely rare for a traditional publishing house to want anything which has already been published (in any format). So no, I wouldn't bother querying agents or publishers with it. Write your next book and if your self-pubbed books sells well, say so in the query letter for that one.

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Old Hack said:

Well, you give up your first rights, for a start. And there are plenty of publishers who only want those first rights.

There are publishers who might still be interested, but there are plenty others who won't.

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veinglory said:

If the editor or agents reads it and thinks you are the next Grisham, they won't care.

But editors and agents tend to be slightly more pragmatic and they are more likely to read 50 manuscripts that month that are all reasonably promising. So it pays not to give them reasons to choose someone else.

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Moving on, you ask:

Giving up First Rights has been quoted as the reason, but given up to whom? I self-published. I still have all the rights to whatever, do I not?

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You haven't given your first rights to anyone: you've used them up yourself by publishing your book. You can only ever do anything for the first time once, and that goes for publishing a book. You've published your book: that's its first time gone. Used up. It cannot happen again. It doesn't matter that you've now withdrawn your book from sale: the book has been published, and as I said to you upstream, you cannot now unpublish it.

It could again be published as an eBook by anyone I choose, could it not? Published in any format I agree to correct?

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Of course it could, so long as you can find a publisher who is interested in publishing it.

I'm failing to see why there is any problem here at all other than no doubt a deep seated knee jerk reaction to the fact the thing was published at sometime, somewhere, end of story.

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I'll try to explain this one to you again.

Publishers have far more submissions than they have publishing slots--probably several hundred, if not several thousand submissions per slot. Therefore they can be very, very picky about what they do publish.

If anything about a book isn't absolutely what they want they can reject it knowing that they'll have another wave of submissions due in any second, and that among that wave of submissions there will be other books just as good as the one they rejected only without the problem that made them say no. Publishers don't need to sign books that have problems associated with them, like potential conflicts over different earlier editions (no matter how small and insignificant those conflicts might appear to the writers of those books); they can just sign up a different book which is unencumbered by such problems.

There are publishers which are prepared to overlook these things: but others will reject your book unread because it has already been published.

I really don't want to argue with anyone and am not here to be stubborn or prove I'm right. So far the answers I've seen would seem to be no deeper than, "You just can't do that-give it up." I've yet to hear how this actually would somehow lessen earning potential for the publisher. I'm hoping if I am indeed wrong, someone can explain it to me.

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If you don't understand the answers you've been given then by all means ask for clarification, or ask for more information. But do not start a new thread about a question you've already had answered; and don't you dare dismiss as shallow or misleading the good advice that the members of AW have given you just because you didn't like it. Our members--some of whom have extensive experience in publishing--have been kind enough to give you their time and their expertise for free. They deserve more respect than that.