Publishing Chapters in Literary Magazine

As I understand it you're looking at an uphill battle. Unless you've got a big name, the parts you published previously sold VERY well, or you just plain luck into the right agent, most agents and publishers won't touch something that's previously been published in another medium.

Paul Lamb said:

My novel has 23 chapters. I have had ten of these chapters published as stand-alone stories in various literary magazines. Does this help or hurt my chances to find representation for the novel? Should I continue to submit individual chapters for publication? Or is there a certain maximum percentage of the manuscript that should appear in print before the entire novel becomes no longer viable for agent representation? What is an agent's perspective on this? Is there a standard or a conventional wisdom about it?

I'd really like to hear from agents and editors or anyone who has specific experience in this.

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That''s pretty much half the book, which I'd think was basically burning first rights. Do you have the rights to the pre-pubbed material right now?

Probably six of one, half dozen of the other, at this point. You've put so much out there that getting an agent for the same stuff would be tricky, unless it's generated huge interest. If you keep putting it out at least you're doing that with it and maybe it'll generate interest?

Check on the rights situation though.

Paul Lamb said:

Well, I've kept all of the rights, so there's no concern there. And I know I've seen acknowledgements in novels that parts or chapters had appeared in other publications before, so I think it's been done. But my gut says enuf is enuf and not to get any more published.

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No one said people hadn't had pieces of novels pubbed in periodicals.

Often, those are negotiated prior to publication of the book in order to generate interest. That's not your situation.

You're talking about a book that has already been published, pretty much, which means first rights are gone, which seriously limits the agents and houses that will be interested. You've also got the problem of the published pieces haven't generated enough to attract someone to contact you, so...

Anything is possible, but if I were you I'd concentrate on something else, if you're looking for a trade deal, and either just put the rest of this out there or hope that someday, if you get deals for other works, someone might be interested in taking this on even though it'd prepubbed.

Paul Lamb said:

Well, I've kept all of the rights, so there's no concern there.

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But you haven't kept the first publication rights to the pieces which have already been published. They're gone, and gone forever.

My feeling is that if the book is brilliant and you submit it carefully this won't be a problem. But if it's not stellar, it could be the excuse editors and agents use to decide against it.

Why would you publish your story anywhere if you want to land a publisher? As others have stated you've burned your first rights away so no one is going to want the story now.

And I wonder who the pub is who told you that about publishing in lit mags wouldn't detract from the desirability of the novel? I'd be very weary of any publisher who doesn't seem to care about first rights. All I have to say is be careful because this isn't how things normally go.

Also whether someone self-published or published with a trade pub or magazine doesn't matter. First rights are gone regardless. I don't understand a pub who'd say it's fine if the work was published in a lit magazine but not self-published when both use first rights???? As I said, be careful. This publisher sounds like a place desperate to publish something with them disregarding first rights so easily.

Agents and editors might be interested if a short story writer is published in highly regarded magazines like the New Yorker, or if they win some of the bigger prizes: but short story collections are such a difficult thing to sell that if the individual stories have already been published, and have only been published in obscure publications, it could easily count against you, I'm afraid.

I think you're in a good place, too. I'm assuming---hoping---that the periodicals who published your stories were respectable, paying venues. (Respectable=paying, for me.) That means ten editors and their bosses thought your work was good enough to pluck out of thousands of submissions and publish. If I were still an agent, I'd want to read, and I wouldn't be deterred by the prior sale of first serial rights. Good luck!

Paul Lamb said:

I found a listing for a publisher of story collections like mine that was very emphatic about requiring that at least some of the stories (chapters) be previously published before submitting the whole manuscript. This was something I'd heard of anecdotally a few times, so I'm glad to confirm it from a publisher. This particular publisher has been around for a long time (25 years) and has a huge catalog, so I'm doing my due diligence right now and then will probably submit my manuscript over the rainy weekend coming up.

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You asked about a novel. Short story collections are a whole different animal, and often do have some of the stories published, ye.