I'm sure this has been dealt with somewhere on this board. I could swear I read it. I can't find it. Forgive me and throw me a bone; I'll go away.
I've almost completed another book. I have a first book with iUniverse (go ahead and laugh . . . I'll wait).
Because the two books are on the same theme--advice and information for horse people given with a lot of solid background and a dose of humor--it would make more sense (to me--not a valid source, perhaps) for me to try to place the first book with a legitimate ("commercial", "traditional", "real") publisher first. IUniverse only requires written 30 days' notice to release me from my contract (which only runs till November anyway). The rights are still mine. They gave me no problems when I sold Finnish language rights to a Finnish translator, which bodes well for their willingness to see me gone.
My question is this: How do I present this to a publisher? I'm leaning towards never again admitting that this book saw daylight. It's a good book, not in need of editing or overhaul. What it could use is illustrations, but that's a separate issue. Only about 200 copies sold (no, not all to me), so it's unlikely that any publisher, agent, or other person of great power and repute has or will ever come across it in my lifetime.
I'm concerned because there are so few publishers who produce the kind of stuff I write that I certainly don't want to alienate any of them. I'm sure the three of them talk. I would like my name to be bandied about in a good way, if at all possible. Like, "Hey! I got an amazing manuscript from an erudite but hitherto-unknown author named (fill in my name) that I think is going to set the publishing world on fire! Could you pass the scones?" would be a best-case scenario. The laughter should come after the reading of the sample chapters, not on first mention of my name.
Any help would be appreciated.
I've almost completed another book. I have a first book with iUniverse (go ahead and laugh . . . I'll wait).
Because the two books are on the same theme--advice and information for horse people given with a lot of solid background and a dose of humor--it would make more sense (to me--not a valid source, perhaps) for me to try to place the first book with a legitimate ("commercial", "traditional", "real") publisher first. IUniverse only requires written 30 days' notice to release me from my contract (which only runs till November anyway). The rights are still mine. They gave me no problems when I sold Finnish language rights to a Finnish translator, which bodes well for their willingness to see me gone.
My question is this: How do I present this to a publisher? I'm leaning towards never again admitting that this book saw daylight. It's a good book, not in need of editing or overhaul. What it could use is illustrations, but that's a separate issue. Only about 200 copies sold (no, not all to me), so it's unlikely that any publisher, agent, or other person of great power and repute has or will ever come across it in my lifetime.
- Do I come right out and say, "Hi! I'm an a**hat. I have a POD book to my discredit and would like you to try to see me as a legitimate writer anyway"?
- Do I just query as if it had never been printed, or is that poor form?
- Do I query on/submit the second MS and hope that it's so well-recieved that the publisher BEGS for more, allowing me to slip in that first book after the fact?
- Do I shut up about the first book entirely, pretend the second book is my first, and hope no one wises up before I succumb to a horse-related injury which will earn me sufficient sympathy to make my detractors feel like dolts when that first MS turns up next to the other skeletons in my posthumous (or post-lawn-dart) closet?
I'm concerned because there are so few publishers who produce the kind of stuff I write that I certainly don't want to alienate any of them. I'm sure the three of them talk. I would like my name to be bandied about in a good way, if at all possible. Like, "Hey! I got an amazing manuscript from an erudite but hitherto-unknown author named (fill in my name) that I think is going to set the publishing world on fire! Could you pass the scones?" would be a best-case scenario. The laughter should come after the reading of the sample chapters, not on first mention of my name.
Any help would be appreciated.
It's a compilation of my articles, which were not only published, but popular. Read by actual people who wrote to me to tell me they'd read them. I . . . I coulda been a contender!