Should I change these books that I've written as a child before sending them to publishers?

Pinkarray said:

I have a bunch of books that I self-published from the age of 9-18 and I am looking to send them to an agent or publisher. Since I wrote most of these books as a kid, I don't know if I should change them or if I should leave them the same so that people can see the kind of books that I have written when I was a child. My writing has been improving over the years but I'm thinking about leaving those books the same. After all, I was young

What do you guys think?

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Sorry, I don't quite understand.

What is your goal? If it's to attempt to get these books trade published, you'd want them as good as they can possibly be (as finding a trade publishing deal for stuff already published is a long shot to begin with). Why would you want to send out work you know is inferior, just because you were a kid when you wrote it? No agent or publisher will want to represent work that's not great.

Pinkarray said:

It's not that they're not good, I sell these books at Farmer's Markets and people love them. It's just that as you continue writing, you get better and that's what I'm talking about, I'm getting better and better as a writer.

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Sure, but if you know you're capable of better work now, why would you send work that you know could be improved out without improving it?

Unless the whole gimmick/USP is that they are written by a child and are therefore childish, I don't understand why you wouldn't improve them. The publishing world is hugely competitive and difficult to crack.

Pinkarray said:

It's not that they're not good, I sell these books at Farmer's Markets and people love them. It's just that as you continue writing, you get better and that's what I'm talking about, I'm getting better and better as a writer.

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Unless you're substantively revising them, I think your biggest problem trying to get them agented is that they're already published. It's not unheard of for an already-published book to attract an agent, but it's really, really, really, really, really, really, really rare.

lizmonster said:

Unless you're substantively revising them, I think your biggest problem trying to get them agented is that they're already published. It's not unheard of for an already-published book to attract an agent, but it's really, really, really, really, really, really, really rare.

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This. And when it happens, it's because the self-published book has already sold very well (and the publisher thinks it can reach an even wider audience with a publishing house behind it). A few years ago I remember reading on Query Shark that agents are not generally interested in taking on a previously self-published book unless it's sold tens of thousands of copies or more. I don't know what the current threshold might be.

The Martian is an Example of a book that was, essentially, a self-published bestseller before it was picked up by a trade publisher.

And to address your original question, when Weir re-published this book via trade publishing, he did clean a lot of things up, including some of the science.

I agree with the others. There's no reason not to make the book the best you can make it with your current level of skill and knowledge.

I'd be looking starting new, with new books if you're hoping for trade publication. If you're self-publishing, it's up to you - that's one of the pleasures (and dangers) of self-publishing. I suspect most writers start writing while they're very young, and most of those works really shouldn't be seen and judged - unless of course, you're Daisy Ashford. Her best-seller was published without correction - but then again, she had a brilliant ear and eye and an almost-impossible-nowadays kind of magpie innocence about her world. She was a nine-year-old writing as a nine-year-old for a nine-year-old just like her; for herself, in fact. It helped that she also had significant writers and heavy-weights from the publishing industry behind her. (She also stopped writing in her teens, perhaps because an intuitive child's-eye-view is hard to replicate as one gets older.)

Still, I've always been glad that no interfering adult corrected her proofs.

ETA: When you have your fifty substantive posts, perhaps throw an excerpt up in SYW, and see what people think.

mccardey said:

ETA: When you have your fifty substantive posts, perhaps throw an excerpt up in SYW, and see what people think.

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Yes! I'd like to read a sample