Then you need to listen to different people. Even Amanda Hocking's commercial deals weren't for her already published books. That deal only came with a movie so they could release a tie-version, as is common.
Not true. The movie is just an option, not set in stone. First book reprint is due out in less than a year; these are not tie-in books. In fact,
Amanda mentions in her blog that she hopes sales of the book via SMP may encourage Hollywood to "green light" the movie deal.
Pretty sure it's in the comments here:
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=2184
Dean polled a bunch (forget how many) of pro writers and another batch (smaller, but forget just how many) about this issue. He also mentioned this a few times in later "New World of Publishing" posts, so it might have been in another. Go read them though, good material.
Even if it's taken, it's still not going to sell as a new book that "fading" thing you want to disdain means $$$ to an author. You can't sell what you don't own.
Ah, but see - if you self publish, you still own all your rights. You can still sell all your rights, if you wish. Go read your last book contract. Mine did not talk about "first rights" anywhere in the document. My last short story sale did, but not book.
Try again, or at least provide a link to support yourself.
...
The arguments you're making are hollow. There's no reason for a publisher to consider the why of a book's failure when they've got 100's to choose from without a bad past tacked onto their history. They've also got 100's to choose from that haven't come close to tapping out their reader base.
You're thinking about this emotionally, not as a business. A publisher wants to make money from books. This is why we're seeing dozens of the upper tier self published books get picked up in the past few months. It's logical. If a book is selling well self published, it will very likely sell *better* when pushed hard by a major publisher. Like Amanda Hocking's Trylle series (shortly to be available in print and ebook from SMP). She's sold hundreds of thousands of copies of each other those three books - yet SMP is confident they can still make a profit from them.
Also, your arguments are counter to each other. Either a book that sells a lot has "tapped out" it's market, or a book with few sales has a "bad past". It can't work both ways.
In fact, neither is accurate. A good book with few sales is an opportunity, the same as an unpublished one would be. A good book with many sales is an opportunity of a much different scale (much greater, in all likelihood), because it already has a proven market.
Yup. Really, really.
More seriously (sorry for the Shrek reference), since you're fond of asking me for citations, do you have one to back up your rebuttal?
Don't do this. Just don't.
Agents and editors use Google. They'll Google your name before considering you as a client and if they find out that you're currently selling the same book you're wanting them to rep, then they aren't going to bother.
Cite? Any reference? Anywhere?
'Cause I can get you very recent counter-references any time you want.
Define "nice check". Most self-published novels TOP OUT in the three figure sales range. That's over the life of the book, total.
Yes, this again.
Most self published novels never make it into ebook form and onto the major sales sites, still. So
they're not really available in the main sales channel. Of course they sell badly.
On top of that, when compared to the percent of trade publisher submissions accepted, the percent of self published submissions actually put into the major retail channels (read: ebook retail channels, for fiction) which make decent money seem to be fairly comparable. Honestly don't know which has better "odds" - just know that good books seem to somehow be doing well either way.
If you average the sales of every book submitted to a trade publisher or agency, the number would probably be very close to zero, because all but a tiny percentage have zero sales. Likewise, if you average the
hundreds of self published books selling thousands of copies per month with the thousands of SP books selling zero, you get...a pretty low number.
Yeah... you can't do that. If you've got 4 books with a publisher and the rights haven't reverted, then you can't publish a 5th in the same universe until they do. It's against the non-compete clauses. If your commercial novels sell for $15 and your self-pubbed e-book sells for $2.99, you're creating a situation where you could compete with your own business through your publisher.
First, I never said "series". I said "no publisher wants to", implying you'd already shopped it around. Second, yes, some people are already doing this (Mike Stackpole, Joe Konrath, Kris Rusch), and in some cases *are* doing this for books in a series. Konrath, particularly, is publishing the rest of his upcoming SF series himself, although the first one will be through a major publisher.
Third, if you signed a contract with that sort of non-compete in it, I sincerely hope you fire your agent. He was supposed to help remove little traps like that. That's his job.
With all due respect - if you're going to ask for citations in a debate, please cite your own responses, as well. It's a matter of courtesy. I suspect, however, that some of your opinions are founded on material which is outdated at this point - understandable, because things have been changing so fast.
