Getting an agent/book deal before the book is written - what if you're famous?

How many folks have already bought the book? I would think a publisher might be wary of wanting to take on your soon-to-be-novel because the readership has already supported you by pledging to the Kickstarter and therefore there *might* not be a lot more sales to be made. Additionally, waiting readership or not, you've already published it in serial format so unless you are adding a lot of new content any first rights are long gone. (Not always a dealbreaker if something looks to be wildly popular, but again - how much of your eager readership has already spent their money on the Kickstarter in order to get a copy of the book?)

Not to mention you kind of sound like you want to have your cake and eat it too. By pursuing the Kickstarter option (successfully) you've already been paid once. Now you're looking for a publisher who would pay you (again) and cover the publication costs.

On the plus side, depending on how extensive your changes are between series and novel, you still have 90k words of material you can show an agent. (Which is kind in between having no manuscript and having a completed manuscript.) If you want to know how they will respond, put together a query, explain the situation and see who is interested.

Best of luck!

If tens of thousands of people are begging for it already, and you've got a Kickstarter funding the book, why even go with a traditional publisher? If you've got the funds and the audience, self publish it.

So it sounds like you initially planned on self-pubbing the book, got a Kickstarter campaign to cover the costs of self-pubbing, and then decided you'd like to venture forth into trade publishing? I don't know much about Kickstarter, but if you're sure you don't want to self pub, is there an option to return the funds back to the people who contributed? Because if you're legally bound to release the book by a certain date, I just don't see a trade publisher going for that. Trade deals usually take 2 years from the time a publishing house buys a book to the release date. If there isn't a way to return the money and get out of the Kickstarter deal, I think you just have to self pub it as you originally planned on doing. :-/

You could reach out to agents who are known for repping self-published authors to ask about your options. I think Kristin Nelson is one. There are others out there. I'd send them a query with a quick run down on the situation ASAP, but I don't know if there's much they can do for you at this point in time...

It's not just about sticking to what you'd said, but like, if you got an agent interested, then what? You said it has to come out before next June? What if there's no publishing deal by then? Or what if there's a publishing deal but they want to release it for say, next Christmas?

What do you say to the artist and the people who paid for the artist if you got a trade deal? No publisher is likely to go with what you've got for the cover, etc.

It doesn't sound tenable, besides the money and other issues w/re the Kickstarter.

About Kickstarter: It sounds like kickstart and other viral marketing is what made the fanbase grow for the story. That's a good start. If I was you, I'd look into how the kickstarter campaign was organized and what you promised your readers. Kickstarting something is pretty much donating, and because of that you can wiggle quite a lot in regards to what you can do. But the problem comes when you're either benefiting yourself or your readers. Take for example, if your readers were donating money through kickstarter for you to publish the book yourself, including the artist fees and marketing. You would have more of a incentive to self-publish and thus follow your word. If you don't, you risk losing interest from your backers. Companies have been known to disappear and deliver shitty products like this. These folks aren't out to be supported by their fanbase. But if the backers were paying for an artist and marketting (only, as you've said), then I believe you're morally free to seek a trade publisher in regards of getting the book out. Kickstarter is used quite often to generate interest. Companies that deal with creative endeavors, like game developers, will often kickstart a game that they know will get funded so its success will lure in outside investors ($$$$$). In this same methodology, it would be fine to approach an agent or publisher with your success and strike a deal. You'd have to work with the publisher to see if they're willing to use the artwork that has already been paid for (you have complete control over this, it's contractual, either the publisher bends or you do) and then use the money for marketing to help support the novel and yourself. On the side of release: It's common for projects to not come out on release, and it's even started in Kickstarter's FAQ. You'd have to be clear about it being picked up by an agent and/or publisher and about what's happening. I would think if the book was very popular with the initial marketing that agents and editors at publishers would be quick to jump on it.

Although... part of me begs to question the use of going with a trade publisher at this point. You've self-published before and are seeing success before it's even released. Yes, you could proposition a trade publisher (if things like I talked about check out), but if this story is seeing such a large surge I would kind of wonder if it would be better self-publishing and see if trade publishers come knocking on your door afterward. It's not completely uncommon. This surge can also lead to you using this as a platform to seek trade publishing on your next book.

The thing that is tickling the back of my mind is: How did your readers find out about this story series? It sounds like a series of short stories you're collecting and expanding into a full novel, so were these posted prior elsewhere? First publishing rights and all that.

Galumph_Triumph said:

So as I understand publishing, with nonfiction, you query agents/publishers with a treatment of your work and only start writing in earnest after you land some sort of deal. With fiction, you write the entire manuscript and submit a polished draft to an agent.

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This is mostly true. Mostly, because there are always exceptions. As you pointed out in your title, people who are "famous" can sometimes take a more direct route to publication.

However, I recently wrote a story series that became enormously popular and received worldwide attention. Tens of thousands of people have read it and now I have a legion of readers urging me to release it as a book. They even crowdfunded it via Kickstarter. I also had to get a lawyer because several independent film companies offered me movie deals. I'm negotiating one as we speak.

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Tens of thousands? That's brilliant!

I hope your lawyer is an IP specialist. An agent might have been better. Because they negotiate deals for you, they know what's good and what's not, and they are far more motivated than a lawyer to get you a really good contract.

If you've not yet finished those negotiations, get an agent now and let them do it for you. You'll almost certainly be better off in the long run.

I feel like I might be able to get an agent and a publisher on board before I finish writing the book. Right now I've basically got a 90,000 word series that I've begun to convert into a novel. But the manuscript isn't finished. The book is legally bound to be released on or before June 2017, as stipulated by the Kickstarter campaign, so I'm working hard to complete it. I fear I literally won't have the time to query agents and wait for a book deal between the time I finish the manuscript and the time it must be released. I was going to self-publish, just like I did with my first book.

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You might be able to get an agent on board now, you're right.

To do this, all you have to do is write a really good query and send it to the right places.

However, the Kickstarter campaign is very problematical, as others have already pointed out.

The timing is too tight. The artwork you've commissioned will probably not be used. Your book isn't even finished yet.

I know hindsight is a wonderful thing. But for everyone else reading this, a better way to have proceeded would be to have found an agent as soon as the interest in your book started picking up, and to have let your agent handle everything. The Kickstarter campaign means you can't now find yourself a trade deal unless you pay back the Kickstarter money, I think. So self publishing is your only option, which is a shame, as you won't be able to access proper distribution and much of the impetus this book could have had will be lost.

There's a saying in business that you want to know who you're getting into bed with. First thing I did after reading your initial post was go to Kickstarter. You made a bunch of brags in your post, and I wanted to see how accurate your brags were.

11 backers for a total of $1,025. Described as some donations from wonderful friends.

This is for Devil's Dreams. I'm not impressed. (Screen shots would not load.)

There's a bit of an improvement for Stolen Tongues.

$2,114 from 119 backers. Not very impressive numbers.

And a free ebook. Is this where most of your "Tens of thousands of people" who have read your book come from?

I don't think I want to do business with you. I'm not an agent, but know venture capitalists and the search I did here took less than five minutes. Anybody who doesn't do this sort of research is not a person you want to do business with.

Jim Clark-Dawe

Jim, I think his initial post was honest but the impression conveyed was different than the reality. He stated later that the Kickstarter gave him a budget of $2000, which is not all that much either for Kickstarter or a book, but--and this is the kicker--somehow his story has gained traction outside of Kickstarter on other websites and, through them, has reached tens of thousands of readers. Those potential readers wouldn't show up on the Kickstarter. I'm not sure where they'd show up, actually, if you were doing a search.

This is all to say that I don't think Galumph_Triumph was being intentionally deceptive.

Thedrellum -- Interestingly enough, I never gave it a thought about whether Galumph_Triumph was honest. It's not an issue as far as I'm concerned.

What I am concerned about is how facts are represented. The first Kickstarter campaign seems to have been supported by his friends. There's nothing wrong with that. But I'm not going to invest money for something that was funded that way.

Second Kickstarter campaign has 119 donors. That's actually not that bad for a Kickstarter campaign. But it doesn't indicate a large public following. It's a very small number and tends to indicate a possible market of maybe 10,000 buyers. Now if I was told that the OP had done a Kickstart campaign and got over a 100 people to contribute to the development of his cover, I would have been impressed. I would have come to the same market number, probably, but in a positive fashion rather than a negative way.

As far as his readership goes, I don't know how many of them took advantage of the free book offer. The problem with that number is we're not seeing a lot of transferring of somebody getting something free to having to pay for it. We might be seeing something in the range of less than 5%, and maybe even below 1%. So if you're going to tell a publisher of readership for free or ninety-nine cent books, you have to be careful. Although the number shouldn't be ignored, it isn't a good number. For instance, the number of unique hits your website has generated is more useful. Number of unique hits versus number requesting free book is also useful.

Here's the problem with the approach that the OP took. At the moment, I could see investing in a print run of 10,000 if I was a publisher, knowing I have a better distribution network. But the OP is bringing to the table a lot of self-promotion experience, some hardcore readers (I'd guess about 1,000), That's not necessarily bad numbers. And this is without looking at his book. If his book doesn't work, then I'd be walking away.

However, my guess is the OP is thinking of a print run of 100K and isn't going to be happy with less. He's going to be a pain to work with because of his expectations.

To give you an example, I say that EQUINE LIABILITY sold through (virtually every copy printed was sold). First off, this tells a publisher that the publisher came up with a number of books that matched the market. Second is that I'm aware that a publisher is more concerned about percentage of books sold as compared to printed than the total number of books sold. 10k books sold for an expected run of 100k books is worse for the publisher than 5k books sold for an expected run of 5k.

Notice I don't say how many books were sold. It's none of your business and may not be a number that impresses you.

As I said, I'm not a publisher or an agent, but I am used to analyzing venture deals. And the first part of the deal is going to be whether the person presenting it is going to be good to work with. I expect the person to puff the deal. I expect the person to point to every favorable thing they can to sell me on the deal. But I want the expectations to match the reality. I don't want to hear about the million dollar idea that isn't worth more than $10k. I'm very happy to hear about the $10k idea that is actually worth $10k.

So it isn't honesty, because the facts were represented correctly in the original post (I assume). But because of how the facts were presented, I'd walk away.

Jim Clark-Dawe

Galumph_Triumph said:

However, I recently wrote a story series that became enormously popular and received worldwide attention. Tens of thousands of people have read it and now I have a legion of readers urging me to release it as a book. They even crowdfunded it via Kickstarter. I also had to get a lawyer because several independent film companies offered me movie deals. I'm negotiating one as we speak.

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I've been thinking about this, Galpumph, and these are the sorts of questions I think you're going to be asked.

What do you mean by "became enormously popular and received worldwide attention"? Do you mean that your series was downloaded or viewed by people around the world? Online, that's not necessarily a big thing. Did it receive press attention? Did people pay for it? Here, details are important.

You say that "tens of thousands of people have read it": where did you get this figure? How was it reached? If you are basing this claim on clicks then how do you know all the people who looked at it actually read it?

"I have a legion of readers urging me to release it as a book": how many readers make a legion? And how many of them are going to be happy to pay for a book?

I want more information about the movie deals you've been offered. Who negotiated them for you? What rights have you given? Are they deals, or are they options?

Make sure you can answer all these questions fluently and easily, and without flannel.

jclarkdawe said:

Thedrellum -- Interestingly enough, I never gave it a thought about whether Galumph_Triumph was honest. It's not an issue as far as I'm concerned.

[...]

As I said, I'm not a publisher or an agent, but I am used to analyzing venture deals. And the first part of the deal is going to be whether the person presenting it is going to be good to work with. I expect the person to puff the deal. I expect the person to point to every favorable thing they can to sell me on the deal. But I want the expectations to match the reality. I don't want to hear about the million dollar idea that isn't worth more than $10k. I'm very happy to hear about the $10k idea that is actually worth $10k.

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Yep.

Old Hack is nicer than I am in that she implies there are questions to be asked and answered. If I had received the first five pages and liked them, and then had this to deal with, I'd pass. I don't care about the answers.

Any agent who you want to represent you has something similar to my rule -- when given a choice between a problematic business deal and mowing the lawn, always take mowing the lawn. Experience teaches you quickly that at least if you decide to mow the lawn, you got something accomplished.

Galpumph -- We're not trying to slam you. I can see some big positives buried in this. But you need to learn how to present yourself.

Jim Clark-Dawe

jclarkdawe said:

...We're not trying to slam you. I can see some big positives buried in this. But you need to learn how to present yourself.

Jim Clark-Dawe

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With over ten years in the marketing industry, including five years in executive-level sales, I cannot emphasize enough how true this is.

Look, it's exciting when you get noticed. It's exciting when more than your immediate circle approve of your writing, and encourage you. It's flattering to receive positive press. But you can't let that go to your head! Any press is going to be biased, and there will be an expiry date on how long you can tout it. Having your kickstarter shared on a site like, say, 9gag or imgur: short shelf life. I wouldn't even mention it to an agent, unless that is specifically the audience you are trying to target. But to have a reputable literary journal, national newspaper, or mainstream news network (think Mashable, et al) support your work? Now we're talking! Use that. Print the articles, and keep high-res PDFs including the date of publication. Be completely honest with your website stats, and focus on what actually matters instead of what may seem impressive. Unique visitors, conversion rates for downloads, high-quality backlinks, even newsletter subscribers--these are useful stats to present if you are looking for representation, publication, investment. Add all reputable press mentions to your website, and ask for permission to display logos of prominent news sources that mention you. Show that you are invested in growing your current reader base via social media, newsletters with new pieces for them to read.

Be proud of what you achieve, but don't let it go to your head. At the end of the day, people want to do business with people that are easy to work with. So far, you don't come off as someone easy to work with, you come off as someone that feels entitled to publication. So be productive--write. Write well, and write often. Work on your elevator pitch, and be humble. If your work is all that and a bag of chips, you sell millions of copies, and go one to have a long and illustrious career as an author? Stay humble anyways, lest you be labeled a jerk.

The reality is that you're only out of pocket $2K for 200 people. These people can be either paid their ten bucks back with a limited edition non-digital book, or their money refunded.

As for the 10K readers begging - talk is cheap. CHEAP. Oh, in my fanfiction days I had that many readers, oh, and the emails I would get about my series ever going pro. My ego was mightily stoked... but the crossover into buying my stuff for real? TWO. Two people out of thousands.

Don't ever count promises, only cash, and work from there. 200 people is a miniscule amount, and $2K is nothing, so you can clean it up and not dent your trade publishing goals that much.

Not being smarmy, but sounds like you should self publish it. If you've got the platform, can a trade publisher really add that much value? I mean yes, there are things they can do that a self publisher can't, but it's probably not worth it given how much more of a cut they take.

A.E.Fisher said:

With over ten years in the marketing industry, including five years in executive-level sales, I cannot emphasize enough how true this is.

Look, it's exciting when you get noticed. It's exciting when more than your immediate circle approve of your writing, and encourage you. It's flattering to receive positive press. But you can't let that go to your head! Any press is going to be biased, and there will be an expiry date on how long you can tout it. Having your kickstarter shared on a site like, say, 9gag or imgur: short shelf life. I wouldn't even mention it to an agent, unless that is specifically the audience you are trying to target. But to have a reputable literary journal, national newspaper, or mainstream news network (think Mashable, et al) support your work? Now we're talking! Use that. Print the articles, and keep high-res PDFs including the date of publication. Be completely honest with your website stats, and focus on what actually matters instead of what may seem impressive. Unique visitors, conversion rates for downloads, high-quality backlinks, even newsletter subscribers--these are useful stats to present if you are looking for representation, publication, investment. Add all reputable press mentions to your website, and ask for permission to display logos of prominent news sources that mention you. Show that you are invested in growing your current reader base via social media, newsletters with new pieces for them to read.

Be proud of what you achieve, but don't let it go to your head. At the end of the day, people want to do business with people that are easy to work with. So far, you don't come off as someone easy to work with, you come off as someone that feels entitled to publication. So be productive--write. Write well, and write often. Work on your elevator pitch, and be humble. If your work is all that and a bag of chips, you sell millions of copies, and go one to have a long and illustrious career as an author? Stay humble anyways, lest you be labeled a jerk.

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Nicely stated. Whatever about the OP's feelings re these and other posts in response to his request for advice/opinion , I certainly appreciate your insight (and JCD's.)

RightHoJeeves said:

Not being smarmy, but sounds like you should self publish it. If you've got the platform, can a trade publisher really add that much value? I mean yes, there are things they can do that a self publisher can't, but it's probably not worth it given how much more of a cut they take.

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Trade publishers don't take a cut, they pay their authors royalties. I know I'm nitpicking: but I've seen so many self publishing evangelists use your term in order to take a swipe at trade publishing that I am tired of hearing this.

Trade publishers pay what they pay and yet they still have plenty of writers thrilled to be published by them. It's because what they offer is great value for money. They pay all the costs associated with publishing, take a lot of risks (for example, if legal proceedings arise because of the book they will almost always pay for the defense), and work their socks off to make the book a success. And the good ones can do all sorts of things that a self published writer can't do: getting books into bookshops nationwide, which has a direct effect on online sales as well as offline; and getting subsidiary, foreign and translation sales, if they hold the rights to do so.

Having said all that, I do think you've got a point. The OP is confident they have a great platform is going to struggle to reconcile the terms of the Kickstarter campaign with a trade publishing deal. It is probably better for them to self publish this book, as seems to have been promised in that Kickstarter campaign, and use this great platform in a query for the next book, which isn't so encumbered by Kickstarter conditions.

Old Hack said:

Trade publishers don't take a cut, they pay their authors royalties. I know I'm nitpicking: but I've seen so many self publishing evangelists use your term in order to take a swipe at trade publishing that I am tired of hearing this.

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Sorry, was not my intention to take a swipe at trade publishing. Taking a cut isn't the right phrase.

RightHoJeeves said:

Sorry, was not my intention to take a swipe at trade publishing. Taking a cut isn't the right phrase.

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I didn't think you were doing that; it's just my weariness with the phrasing, that's all. Thank you for your comment.

Old Hack said:

...which isn't so encumbered by Kickstarter conditions.

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How encumbering are Kickstarter conditions, though, really? For example the OP mentioned having to publish by a certain date, because that's what was promised. But it's pretty common in my experience for Kickstarter projects to complete late, even very late. I'm not confident that the actual constraints are as tight as people seem to be taking for granted they are, for timing certainly, but perhaps in other ways as well.

Galumph_Triumph, I went and read your series at No Sleep and enjoyed it. Congratulations for writing something that entertained so many. I think perhaps the negative reaction in a couple of the comments here came from contrasting the seeming hyperbole of your description of the situation compared with the Kickstarter numbers. The "tens of thousands", "worldwide attention", and "what if you're famous?" implied a much larger number of backers and amount of money. Technically, you didn't say there were thousands of Kickstarter backers, just thousands of readers, but the description kind of blended together and created that impression, which led to disappointment by the reality.

Even going by the Reddit numbers, which are indeed in the thousands, I'm not sure your "tens of thousands" of readers is right. Forgive me that I can't switch tabs to get quoted numbers from there; I'm on my iPad. But the piece is broken up into many parts, each with thousands of likes, yes, but each with fewer than ten thousand. (Unless I have read the data wrong, in which case please correct me!) Added together, there are tens of thousands of "likes" (if that's the Reddit term) but presumably those likes come from many of the same readers. For example, if each part of a seven-part story had X number of likes, I would assume that that implies X number of readers, not X times 7 number of readers.

Perhaps your "tens of thousands" comes from other platforms, rather than or perhaps added to your Reddit audience. Your statement might be entirely correct. But the contrast between what the technically-correct description led me to expect and what I found at Reddit and Kickstarter made me feel skeptical.

Your series really did make a big splash at Reddit (and presumably elsewhere); perhaps a more restrained and specific description of your story's impact would help your case. That way people would be impressed by your actual numbers, and not disappointed or feeling misled by the actual numbers compared to what they were primed to expect.

(ETA I'm not a Reddit regular and may be conflating/confusing upvotes and views. Perhaps the "views" numbers are in the tens of thousands and I'm not savvy at finding that number. But, again, I think that's where specificity would help. When told generally "tens of thousands" and the Kickstarter and apparent Reddit numbers are less than that, it's deflating. But if I knew more precisely what exactly you were describing, I'd be less likely to make the mistake of thinking the claim and reality don't match up.)

Galumph_Triumph said:

it appears that I might be on the precipice of actually selling more than a thousand copies of each book. So I wanted to explore my best options.

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I thought somewhere on reddit you said you've got an interested agent. Nevermind, it is possible to get an agent interested with what you got. But in order to get the job done, you need to consider this:

In order to sell xxx copies of each book, first there has to be a book with two specific features: 1) finished 2) standard of writing has to be up to publication quality . And this is a problem particular to you. "Famous people" don't have that problem, because they can get a ghost writer if needed. So, the question every publisher/agent will be asking themselves is: can you deliver a finished, polished product?

Think of "The Martian", it only came out as a book after the movie went large. As a book, "The Martian" was not publication quality on its own, it sells because of the movie, not the other way around. So, how is your "book" writing? Not the internet series, the actual book you want to publish? The internet series is good for the internet, for a trade published book they are slightly below par (a bit condensed as narrative, and a bit repetitive, same thing happens over and over with slight variation). So, it's about style, narration, format. Copy/paste may not do. You need a good sample of perfectly polished pages. You also need an ending, and a generally well constructed story (this can be done in a synopsis). Send query, sample and synopsis, and all your claims to fame to agents and see what happens.