From Self-Published to Traditionally Published?

I had a thought the other day and wondered how possible it is:
Let's say I self-published my book for a while, a year and because I'm not a big name publisher, author or anything, sales are poor. Because of this I say "forget it, I want to have my self-published book re-published by an established company."

Is that possible? Would a publishing company touch a book that has been previously published before from the author (or even another publishing company)?

 

It isn't going to happen. Traditional publishers want first publication rights, unless you are selling like gangbusters and they can sign you for a bunch of new books, they might reprint something you've previously written, but it's a really hard sell. Once you self-publish, you have pretty much doomed your books and they'll never find a legitimate traditional publisher.

 

If you have huge sales figures then they might look your way.
Otherwise I don't think they will touch it with a 10 ft. pole.

 

This is the key to the entire thing right here. If I ever finish my WIP, I'm going to shop it to traditional publishers first. If I can't sell it, I'll publish it myself (Kindle, probably) and fight the marketing fight to get it noticed. I'd rather have someone else do that part and be able to continue writing, which I think I do better than I market. But like banks who only want to loan you money if you don't need it, publishers only want your pre-published work if you don't really need them.

 

Today, traditional publishers don't really do a lot to market your work either. They expect you to carry a large part of the load.

 

What do they provide, then?

 

Usually better access to brick-and-mortar bookstores and contacts within the publishing industry themselves. They do virtually nothing to get the word out about your book to end-buyers. It's really why most new authors never earn out of their advances. Most of their books are returned by bookstores because they didn't sell.

 

What happens if an author gets an advance and the book doesn't earn it out? I presume the publisher takes the hit, writes off a loss, and moves on. If your assertion is true, and most new authors never earn out their advances, then this explains why publishers are reticent to take on new authors.

It seems to me that a new author's best bet is to write a novel, publish and market it themselves, prove their popularity, then pursue a traditional publisher for a second novel.

 

I suspect my ideas about how traditional publishing works are outdated. I made a small foray into self publishing a few years ago, and only succeeded with one short because it was part of an Amazon program (now defunct) called "Kindle Worlds". I sold several hundred copies of the short, and was very pleased. But my entire earnings over two years of sales amounted to a few hundred dollars; great for a newbie, but not worth putting thousands of dollars into cover art, hiring an editor, advertising dollars, and the rest of the things you need to do if you're doing it yourself. Hence my thought that pursuing a traditional publisher was the answer for my (hopefully forthcoming) novel.

 

I don't either. I had a trad deal and I turned it down. My agent, who is a long-time friend of mine, after I had gotten the offer, told me that I'd hate it. I agree entirely. Traditional publishing is not for me. They put out, at best, a book a year, with an average lead time of 18-24 months. Last year alone I wrote 6 books. I'm going to do the same thing this year. I might have to do all of the work, but I also make 70% of the royalties, as opposed to 10-15% for a trade publisher. They honestly do nothing for you, I don't give a damn about being in a bookstore because bookstore sales are a tiny percentage of overall sales (I just talked to a friend who was a former trade published author and he said that bookstores accounted for 1.7% of his overall sales and now he's going self-published). I want the control and I don't want anyone looking over my shoulder telling me what I should do. If I screw up, it's my fault. I take ownership of that.

 

That's just not the reality. For both trade and self-publishing, the name of the game today is repetition. You keep writing. Publishers want you to produce series that they can make residual money on and self-pub is pretty much the same. It is absolutely publish or perish today. You need to be able to keep up on a schedule, either self-imposed for self-pub, or mandated by a publisher, but for a publisher, if you don't perform, they stop publishing your work and you're out in the cold. Today, you can make a significant income by having a large back catalog and sticking with Kindle Select. Lots of page reads make plenty of money. You just need to be willing to produce quality product on a regular schedule. One or two short stories simply won't get you anywhere.

 

Entirely agree. It's why Stephen King used to write under pseudonyms, it was the only way he could keep publishing around a traditional schedule.

 

Thanks all for your answers, it's more or less what I suspected. Guess I really need to make up my mind on self or traditional publishing then since I cannot do both with the same book!

I have a follow up question that I have forgotten on my drive home, by this discussion is great! As soon as I remember it, I will post it .

 

This begs another question: for my current WIP, it's at least a two-part, possibly three-part story. Part one is written, and I'm going through the lengthy turd polishing phase. Note that I'm not at all an accomplished writer, at least in the fiction space, and this is my first work of significant size. I thought about publishing Part One as a standalone novella (~50K words), then follow it with the second and third Parts. The devil on my other shoulder told me to wait until the entire novel is finished and publish then.

I'm an unknown author with limited time, resources, and skill (developing the latter). There's no way I could crank out multiple novels in a year at this stage of the game. Perhaps in retirement (ten or so years hence) two per year, but no more. I could maybe publish three or four ~10K word short stories, but that's about it.

So, in your view, should I publish my novel in parts or as a whole?

 

I'd publish the whole thing. And I work full time too and still write multiple novels a year.

 

It's not just the full time job that impacts my ability to spend time writing, but it's good to hear the people achieve both. The more I write, the better I get at it. I will get more productive going forward.

 

That's exactly how it works. The more you do, the better you get and the better you get, the more you produce. If I hadn't been doing this for decades, I never would be able to write at the volume I write at.