Can you sell a story to a mag if it's been KDP-ed?

goldmund · Oct 2, 2011

When I have a novel/collection in English, I think I'd rather go the commercial way, but so far I've only several stories.

Some of them found their home in literary magazines, some I've put up as Kindle ebooks -- as I think they're too good to appear once in a small mag with audience limited to literary folk and other writers and then disappear in time.

Yet, I wonder: if I take them down from Amazon, can I still submit them to a magazine?

What about if I would like to sell an anthology to a publisher, would it make any difference that some of them were on KDP?

J. Tanner · Oct 2, 2011

It's possible. You can only sell reprint rights and it's good form for your cover letter to describe the publishing history of the story.

"The story was originally published in [literary magazine x] and was self-published in a e-book collection from Date A to Date B."

Never hit the second case where I stopped publishing it and the further history is less important than being clear that the first rights are gone and where they went. So the last bit is just what I think I'd probably do in your case--not what I've really done.

Magazine's submission guidelines will tell you if they accept reprints or not. In general, you will make less money, have a tougher time finding markets, and often a magazine that does do reprints uses the space to publish big name authors and stories they like on the cheap rather than finding it in random submissions. (But it's not impossible.)

goldmund · Oct 3, 2011

Thanks... I still can't decide which way to go, however.

I'm not really sure how much worth is the cred a professional mag publication gives you. Money is negligible, unless we're talking Playboy or NYT. I'm soon going to release a free computer game, very literary, that might interest some people in reading my work. On the other hand, I got personal rejections from some very respectable mags, so this way is also enticing. Oh, the indecision! Oh, give me an agent!

J. Tanner · Oct 3, 2011

Well, one thing's pretty sure, there's little value in taking them down. You can leave them up and still submit them to places that accept reprints. You can't undo what you've done.

(Agents are typically worthless for short fiction by all accounts so that wouldn't help either I don't think.)

Can you sell a story to a mag if it's been KDP-ed?

goldmund

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J. Tanner

goldmund

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J. Tanner