Does self-pubbing poetry hurt chances of having fiction traditionally published?

[September]

I have heard that self-publishing can make it harder to become traditionally published later. Does this still hold true if you've self-published poetry and then try to get fiction traditionally published?

[Medievalist]

It can be difficult to re-publish the same work commercially (the first rights having been used already) but even so, it's not impossible, and it's mattering less than it used to.

But self-publishing poetry shouldn't really influence your success / failure to publish another work later unless you're the sort of author who becomes notoriously offensive or something like that.

[Sheryl Nantus]

I've self-pubbed my haiku and haven't had any problems....

[Old Hack]

September, please read the guidelines: it's trade publishing, not traditional. Thanks.

[James D. Macdonald]

Originally Posted by September

I have heard that self-publishing can make it harder to become traditionally published later. Does this still hold true if you've self-published poetry and then try to get fiction traditionally published?

No.

All that counts is the manuscript that's on the editor's desk.

[christwriter]

Originally Posted by James D. Macdonald

No.

All that counts is the manuscript that's on the editor's desk.

I'd heard differently. Janet Reid in particular has said that if you have poor sales on a self-published work, it'll be harder to sell an editor on a different, unpublished work. I think this is the blog post I read on that:

http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/...-questiom.html

That was the post was one of the reasons I gave up on trade publishing as an option. When I started self-publishing I had thought I could try trade again a couple years later, but when I read that blog post I came to the understanding that unless I was massively successful, that door was pretty much permanently closed.

I mean, if I couldn't do it when my record was clean, why should I think I could pull it off now?

[Old Hack]

Christwriter, the OP asked if self publishing poetry would make it more difficult for her to then sell fiction to a trade house:

Originally Posted by September

I have heard that self-publishing can make it harder to become traditionally published later. Does this still hold true if you've self-published poetry and then try to get fiction traditionally published?

In the blog post that you linked to, Ms Reid writes,

There's nothing wrong with publishing shorter works on Amazon first, but it's not some sort of golden ticket to a big-ass book deal.

I don't think that clashes at all with what's been written here: what will matter will be the book on submission.

Remember that Amazon doesn't share sales figures, so it's impossible for agents and editors to find out how many copies a Kindle edition has sold (although their Amazon ranking will give a rough indication), whereas the sales of print editions are much easier to track. As most self publishing focusses now on electronic editions, agents might well find it impossible to find out those sales numbers.