Nonfiction credit in fiction query ?

it all matters

I'm told (by agents and other writers) that yes, you should. This falls into the category of showing you have gotten a book done on time and made some editor/publisher somewhere happy. They also like sales figures but if it's too soon or as in my case you're a co-author it doesn't seems so important.

jph said:

Say you have already published a nonfiction book and you are looking for an agent to represent a fiction manuscript.
Assume further the nonfiction topic has nothing to do with the fiction proposal.

Question: Is it a good idea to put the nonfiction credit in the query letter or not?

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If it was published by a reputable publisher, sure, go ahead and include it. If it was self-published or published for a POD press, then only include it if the sales figures are impressive.

~suki

A nonfiction book says nothing about your ability to write fiction, but it does say something about your ability to finish a project, your ability to write something a publisher thought was worth risking money on, and your basic ability to write coherent sentences. This means mentioning it will never do any harm, as long as the book was published by a respectable publisher.

jph said:

Your responses all make sense, folks, although your arguments also apply to articles published in highly reputable scientific journals. That list of publications would be very long, and surely inappropriate in a query letter I would think.

I should also have said that the nonfiction book in question is in French.
Couldn't that be a turnoff for a US agent or publisher?

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I've been told here that non-fic written in the course of my employment counts, as someone paid me to produce these. I don't list my scientific pubs in a query, I only state them something like: "In addition to my fiction credits, I have 53 scientific articles published in scholarly, trade, and popular journals." Of course I'll provide a list if they want.

I doubt a publisher/agent is going to blink about the book being French, as long as the publisher is reputable.

For a long list of articles, procedure is to name the top three, and then simply add something like "and many other articles."