If you self-publish a book, is it possible that you’ll ever sell it to a royalty-paying publisher?
Victor posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
I understand that your teaching and mentoring are intended to help authors get published via commercial publishing channels. Nevertheless, an author may ultimately have to accept universal rejection and turn to some form of self-publishing (hard copy or e-books). Question: does the self-publishing of a book preclude the author from ever selling the same book to a publisher?
Randy sez: Victor submitted this question several weeks ago (I have a large backlog of questions waiting to be answered), so it’s a nice coincidence that his question has come to the top of my stack just after my very long blog post on Wednesday about the future of publishing.
First, let’s clarify my teaching goals. I teach writers how to get themselves organized, how to write well, and how to market themselves effectively so that they can earn a decent reward for their creative efforts. Until recently, “earning a decent reward” meant getting published by a royalty-paying publisher.
But the world is changing rapidly. For some years now, it’s been possible to earn a pretty good reward by creating and selling electronic non-fiction products. That’s what I do here on this web site and it’s well worth my time. It’s now becoming possible to do the same with fiction.
A publisher is no longer required for a writer to earn decent money writing fiction. A publisher is certainly a nice thing to have. If you get published by a royalty-paying publisher, you have the gratification of knowing that your work is pretty darn good, because publishers are in business to make money and they’re necessarily pretty good judges of quality. So I’m not at all denigrating the value of a publisher. I’m just observing that money can now be made in fiction without a publisher. That’s a huge change in the industry and it’s happening RIGHT NOW.
Again, I’ll refer you to the blog of Joe Konrath, where he has been detailing his e-book successes lately. The man is earning over $10k per month in e-books on Amazon. That’s a pretty decent wage. That’s better than most authors earn by working with royalty-paying publishers. And I read just a day or two ago that James Patterson has now earned over a million dollars in sales of e-books.
In the past, it’s been rare for a self-published novel to go on to find a home with a royalty-paying publisher. We can all think of examples: ERAGON was originally self-pubbed. So was THE SHACK. So was . . . um, I can’t think of any others right off the top of my head, but I know there are some others. The list is not long.
The future, I believe, is going to be very different. In my last blog post, The Future of Publishing, I predicted that in the next few years, it’ll be common for novels to be self-pubbed first as e-books and then to be picked up by major publishers. In fact, I think it quite likely that nearly all books in the future will be self-published first as e-books, and that the publishers will choose those that do well on the e-lists to be published as p-books.
This is a massive change. Like most changes, it will be good for some people and bad for other people. My view is that the lot of writers will improve. The reason is that there will be less money in the pie for the manufacturing, transport, and handling of physical books. That will leave more money in the pie for everyone else. Since writers are an absolutely necessary part of the pie, they have a fighting chance to get more of that pesky money.
Victor, to answer your question: In the past, it was possible but unlikely to sell a self-pubbed novel to a royalty-paying publisher. In the future, I believe it will become the norm.
Of course, I could be wrong, but I am confident enough in this prediction that I am currently working towards re-releasing all of my old out-of-print novels as e-books. Assuming those do well, I plan to e-publish a couple of other novels that crashed and burned after being sold to publishers; neither of those actually went into production, and I own all rights to them, so I’m going to publish them myself. If these e-books flop, then they’ll flop. But I’m not in the habit of flopping. I expect to do well.
As the saying goes, “I eat my own dog food.” I’m not merely telling you what I think will be good for you. I’m telling you what I think will be good for me and you and all writers.
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
Randy’s answer is good (and I really like his vision of the future of publishing). But if what you mean, Victor, is, “If I query my novel to traditional publishers, will they dismiss it immediately because it was already self-published?”
The answer (implied by Randy, but not said outright, I think) is it depends on how well it sold as a self-published book. If it sold well (I’m thinking many tens of thousands of copies, though it probably depends on the publisher), then they might be interested. Otherwise, no.
If, like me, your heart is set on traditional publishing, then the best thing you can do with a rejected novel is to take what you learned from it and write something new and better.
Randy sez: I’m not a publisher, but my understanding is that they’d be quite interested in working with any author who could show a track record of sales of more than 5,000 copies on a self-published book. If I were a publisher, I’d certainly be eager to back an author like that, because an author who can move that many copies on their own could probably sell 5 to 10 times that number with the marketing power of a major publisher. I met a young writer a few years ago at a writing conference who had sold 6,000 copies of her self-published urban romance novel in less than a year. She gave me a copy of her book and I read it on the plane going home. I introduced her via email to five agents who I thought might be interested in her. One of them signed her and fairly soon thereafter sold a series deal to a major publisher. In the past, this kind of thing was fairly rare. In the future, I think it’ll happen more and more often and will eventually become the new norm.
So long as the author owns all the rights, just put a new title on the thing, use a different pseudonym, and remarket.
A friend of mine self-published a book in December. In June she won an award for her book and an honourable mention for another award. A German publisher has contacted her for possible translation and publication in German. Looks like Randy’s predictions are on track.
Yes finally, Randy who is an awesome writer/storyteller will self-publish. Puhlease tell me you will continue the City of God series (CoG)? I will kiss you on the lips even with the funky stache that most scientists seem to have. I was the guy who boycotted Z for not publishing the CoG series and recommended that you self-publish then. Well I had a house fire and lost all my hard copies of your books and it would be such a pleasure to have them again. What are some of your books we fans of your fiction can look forward to?
What A happy day!
Randy sez: I no longer have the mustache, but even without that impediment, I’ll have to pass on the smooch. Yes, my plan is to release all my novels, including the City of God series. Then I’ll release a couple of other books that never got published. Assuming those do well (and I have a great track record of launching electronic products over the last few years, so I have a strong feeling they’ll all do well), I’ll continue the City of God series for another 3 or maybe even 4 books. Stay tuned over the next few months as the details for all these firm up.
A traditional publisher should be able to know a good book, whether or not it’s selling. There are good books, more than a million of them, out there that are self-published but are not selling well, unfortunately, perhaps because the authors do not have the marketing power. Therefore, I totally disagree with Randy’s assertion (or do I say opinion or insinuation?) that a book should only be rated based on its track record. J. K. Rowling, for example, suffered quite a number of rejections before her first (Harry-Porter) book was finally published. You can see with me here the very bad sense of judgment possessed by the traditional publishers. Perhaps J. K. Rowling’s dream would have been killed, buried and forgotten, if that chain of rejections had not been broken, if someone (maybe the daughter of the publisher who finally gave her the benefit of the doubt) had not given her a chance. So, what am I saying? I’m saying that a self-published book must not be assessed only against the backdrop of track record. In my estimation it is immaterial. A lot of writers, especially the budding ones like me, have resorted to self-publishing out of all the frustration that emanated from the traditional publishers. They (the trado-publishers) should have a re-think forthwith, because there would never have been the Austens and the Dickens and the Pattersons and the Rowlings and the Steels today, if they had not been given, at least, a chance by the traditional publishers at their budding stages. I really pity the traditional publishers, because the stone they reject today always ends up becoming the cornerstone tomorrow, in the hands of the “risk-taking” publisher, or in the ambit of self-publishing. They know it, yet they do not want to learn their lesson.