Edit: Now that I have recovered from my crisis of faith/panic attack, I shall continue onward. Oh happy day!
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Can I....unself publish?
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The first thing any agent is going to do is Google your book to see if it's out there and what the sales are. If they're low it's likely the agent won't be interested in taking the book on.
You can't hide the fact that you self-published.
This is the reason why anyone looking to self-pub their book should be very sure of what they're doing. Using up first pub rights is an important step.
Can you unpub it and submit to agents now? Sure! Is it possible one will take it on? Possibly...
But not likely.
I'd move onto your next book and make this sort of decision before you burn first rights.
All IMO, of course.
You can't hide the fact that you self-published.
This is the reason why anyone looking to self-pub their book should be very sure of what they're doing. Using up first pub rights is an important step.
Can you unpub it and submit to agents now? Sure! Is it possible one will take it on? Possibly...
But not likely.
I'd move onto your next book and make this sort of decision before you burn first rights.
All IMO, of course.
You can't erase the fact you've published, but you can remove your book from the market. You'd still have to divulge that you did self-publish to any perspective agents/publishers.
My thought is that if you want a trade deal with a particular title, you shouldn't self publish that title. It's not a short cut to a trade deal. But it's not likely going to hurt you getting a trade deal on future manuscripts (though unless you sell a boat load, it probably won't help you either).
I'm not familiar with agents who take newly self-published works and try to sell them to trade publishers. Mostly it's SP authors who are selling gang-buster style who get the attention of publishers looking to take a successful book to a larger market (i.e. bookstores).
I also, however, wouldn't let your first few weeks (or months for that matter) of sales bother you too much. The sales curve for SP authors isn't like trade published authors. You'll rely on Word of mouth, and getting the word out takes time. The more titles you have, the better your return on investment for your marketing will be.
The title you have self published might not interest a trade press until it's selling many many thousand copies, but you certainly haven't forfeited a chance at a trade deal in the future with another manuscript.
that's my 2cents.
Good luck.
My thought is that if you want a trade deal with a particular title, you shouldn't self publish that title. It's not a short cut to a trade deal. But it's not likely going to hurt you getting a trade deal on future manuscripts (though unless you sell a boat load, it probably won't help you either).
I'm not familiar with agents who take newly self-published works and try to sell them to trade publishers. Mostly it's SP authors who are selling gang-buster style who get the attention of publishers looking to take a successful book to a larger market (i.e. bookstores).
I also, however, wouldn't let your first few weeks (or months for that matter) of sales bother you too much. The sales curve for SP authors isn't like trade published authors. You'll rely on Word of mouth, and getting the word out takes time. The more titles you have, the better your return on investment for your marketing will be.
The title you have self published might not interest a trade press until it's selling many many thousand copies, but you certainly haven't forfeited a chance at a trade deal in the future with another manuscript.
that's my 2cents.
Good luck.
So....Cassandra Clare, E.L. James and Amanda Hocking are very much the exception to the rule? You don't say.
I guess I'm mostly curious because the ebook I published is intended to be a series. I think I will have even less opportunities if the first one is self published.
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To be pedantic, once a book is published it cannot be unpublished. You can stop selling it: but that won't erase its history, and you have to be scrupulously honest about its publication history with any agents or publishers you might approach.
More and more agents and publishers are willing to consider books which have been previously self-published: but I'm hearing on the grapevine that many who have taken on previously self-published books are now reconsidering their feelings here.
They saw several previously self-published books do really well for trade publishers, and so took a few on themselves; but many of the books so published have failed to take off, and there's a new wariness creeping in.
By all means have a go if you want to: you might well find someone who is interested in your work, especially as you've not done well with it and its market is still relatively unexploited. But don't be surprised if you have to query widely to find any interest.
Oh--and also, if you're serious about finding an agent, take the book off the market as soon as you can. If it's still available for sale that will almost certainly be a strike against it.
More and more agents and publishers are willing to consider books which have been previously self-published: but I'm hearing on the grapevine that many who have taken on previously self-published books are now reconsidering their feelings here.
They saw several previously self-published books do really well for trade publishers, and so took a few on themselves; but many of the books so published have failed to take off, and there's a new wariness creeping in.
By all means have a go if you want to: you might well find someone who is interested in your work, especially as you've not done well with it and its market is still relatively unexploited. But don't be surprised if you have to query widely to find any interest.
Oh--and also, if you're serious about finding an agent, take the book off the market as soon as you can. If it's still available for sale that will almost certainly be a strike against it.
Well (and I don't mean to mine your brain here, but you are really being so helpful), it's more like I'm realizing that this particular book is NOT a romance, like I previously published. Romance novels sell well in the ebook market.
I have no problem admitting that it was self published. I have nothing to hide in that respect. Do you think I might benefit in dropping by QLH? Having queried non self published books before, I really have no idea how to say "I self published this for less than 7 days, realized I needed more support. It's okay, no one read it except for ARC."
I guess I'm feeling a little torn now.
James wasn't self-published; once she filed the serial numbers off her popular fanfic "Master of the Universe", it was published by a small press which later became unable to handle the demand. Clare was also a fanfic writer, but I've never heard of her being self-published.
Amanda Hocking did make a success out of self-publishing, but she had more than one title and she worked extremely hard at marketing.
So....Cassandra Clare, E.L. James and Amanda Hocking are very much the exception to the rule? You don't say.
I guess I'm mostly curious because the ebook I published is intended to be a series. I think I will have even less opportunities if the first one is self published.
To my knowledge, Cassandra Clare didn't self publish so much as she was a fan-fiction star who wrote some original stuff that found a publisher. Amanda Hocking sold hundreds of thousands of copies of her books before they were picked up, but again, you're talking some examples that aren't recent.
I've heard of lots of people leveraging their SP success into trade deals, but none who have done so without first having SP "success" i.e. they sold a LOT of copies.
Romance does sell really well, but it's by no means the only way to have success in the SP market (nor is it a sure thing that it'll be successful). I can point out examples of people doing well in most genres. What most of the successful SP authors have in common, however, is that they're pretty prolific. Then again, the most successful trade authors are also pretty prolific.
Was this book your first? Did you try to get an agent with it already before you went the self-publishing route? Was this your first attempt at self-publishing?
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No, this was my second book. I went the self publishing route because I felt I had enough experience and enough social media sway to do so. My first book did pretty well, all things considered.
But like I said above, I'm starting to genuinely believe that I can't reach the right people for this book with self publishing. Having published a romance previously, most of my fans are fans of romance. It's not translating to interest in this book, which is speculative YA fiction.
So yeah, that's why I'm wondering (I have actually taken it down everywhere as a result of this post) if it is early enough to try and submit it to agents still, since no one has read it with the exception of the ARC I did for my blog. I wonder if agents would have an issue with that at all, me having marketed it :/ Though, I suppose I could spin that as them being a bunch of beta readers.
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If you're going to query, then yep, QLH is brilliant.
But decide what you're going to do first, because if they help you with a query which you then decide not to use, that would be taking time up which our critters could have used to help someone else.
Maybe a little off-topic, but it's probably best not to consider "free downloads" as sales, which you seem to be doing (unless I read the post wrong). No one really knows, but there's at least speculation that a substantial portion of the free downloads are never read, or at least aren't read anywhere close to the download, so the number of free downloads doesn't mean much of anything. If you have 5K free downloads, there were probably somewhere between 1 and 5K (but probably closer to 1 than to 5K) people who read it.If you're counting on all 5K to have read it, so that they'll want the next book, you're vastly over-estimating your reader base.
Bottom line: only count the sales (minus returns) or the people who join your mailing list (newsletter list) as your reader base. If the first book sold FOR MONEY, not free, close to 5K copies, you should have a reader base. If virtually all of them are free downloads, it's likely that you don't have a reader base.
Bottom line: only count the sales (minus returns) or the people who join your mailing list (newsletter list) as your reader base. If the first book sold FOR MONEY, not free, close to 5K copies, you should have a reader base. If virtually all of them are free downloads, it's likely that you don't have a reader base.
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