NEED AGENT ADVICE: Do agents consider material with ISBN #s?

If it's been published at all, the first rights are gone. The only thing an agent could sell from that point would be reprint rights which have significantly lower advances.

DO NOT publish the book if you seriously are seeking representation for it.

Regards,
Scott

Popeyesays said:

If it's been published at all, the first rights are gone. The only thing an agent could sell from that point would be reprint rights which have significantly lower advances.

DO NOT publish the book if you seriously are seeking representation for it.

Regards,
Scott

Click to expand...

Not quite true.
As your username suggests you are UK-based then if you publish it over here then North American Rights would still be available. These rights would be of interest to a US-based agent.
It is still not the smartest way of proceeding.

glasgow-writer said:

Thank you to all agents or those with agenting experience that can help with this question:

I have a manuscript which is currently being sent out to agents for possible representation. I also own a tiny publishing company and I would like to publish this manuscript through my own publishing company and assign it an ISBN. Then I plan to yank the ISBN if and when an agent takes the manuscript on and finds a bigger publishing house to publish it.

Question: Do you see of any reason why an agent wouldn't want to take material on if it is currently being published by a small publisher (or is self-published for that matter)? Or if they see it listed on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc? I want to put the book on the market ASAP, but would resist doing so if it will deter an agent's motivation to represent it.

Thanks for taking the time to respond!

Click to expand...

What I really want to know is this: How is the agent going to find out about the self-publication ISBN in the first place? You're not going to put it on the manuscript (another Mark of the Amateur, along with putting a copyright notice on a manuscript), and at that stage the agent isn't going to go looking for it on the Internet.

No, the agent is only going to find out about it in your cover letter, where (if you have done what you say you want to do) you'll have to disclose that it's been previously self-published. Some agents will care; others won't.

The bottom line is that self-publishing a manuscript that is still making the rounds is a very, very bad idea. The odds of getting a previously self-published book picked up by a commercial publisher are comparable to, if not lower than, the odds of getting an unpublished manuscript picked up—and given the competition these days, it's unwise to limit the pool of agents and publishers who will not have prejudged and rejected your manuscript on the basis that first rights have been exhausted.

Agents have been known to google the name of a prospective client. (Miss Snark says she does it routinely before making an offer. If the book is self-published, it's likely to come up in that kind of search and make the agent wary.

JD