A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: Why Traditional Publishers Generally Will Not Take On a Self-Published Book

 

 (photo by Frank Perez)

It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.

Today's topic is  about taking a self-published book to a traditional publisher in hopes of getting a contract. At least a couple of times a month, a self-published author approaches MSI Press with a proposal to republish his or her self-published book. They all seem to think that their  poorly selling self-published book would soar to best-seller status if only a traditional publisher would take it on or that their self-published book with modest sales would not thrill a publisher by how many sales had been made or had many polite reviews simply re-stated the content and refrained from saying anything negative. If you are that self-published author, you might want to consider the following realities:

• Generally, I simply send a polite, "no There are several reasons why a traditional publisher is likely not to take on a self-published book.
• insufficient potential sales - what authors do not realize that even if sales are pretty good, most publishers will discount those sales as the scooping up of most of the purchases to come from the author's platform; typically, the best sales usually come in the first few months (this time has already past and those purchasers have already passed through) and the author's own platform(s) (that marketing possibility has been exploited, perhaps too extensively to leave much for a new publisher -- and, for sure, traditional publishers make decisions based on potential market, much of which depends upon the author's platform)
• quality of the book - all too often, self-published books do not pass through the rigorous tests that traditionally published books do, and their flaws jump out at an acquisitions editor
• potentially dated information - if you have published your book a year or more ago, some of the information may already be out of date
• author attitude - often, the attitude (correct of incorrect) of a self-published author comes across to a traditional publisher as narcissistic, impatient, and pushy (none of those attributes might fit, but those are ones that I expect, based on interactions with a large number of self-published authors, and likely I, and other publishers, look at a self-published book and its author with an unintended jaundiced eye.
• On a few rare occasions that I quickly regretted, I have thought that perhaps a self-published book would fit with our lines and could be "fixed." Only once has that happened, and the author was a high school friend I was trying to help out. With authors who drop in with their books self-assessed as potential best sellers, resistance to suggested fixes has been strong.
• what can be improved - most of the self-published authors who have approached MSI Press have not wanted to reword, reorganize, expand, clarify, or otherwise change their books in substantial ways
• author attitude - MSI Press has found many of these self-published authors to come across as arrogant where humility would have gotten them much farther.
• If your reason for self-publishing is to prove to a publisher that the book is worthy of publication, you may actually be undercutting your ability to achieve that goal by self-publishing.
• You will likely come close enough to exhausting sources of sales from your platform(s) that a publisher would not be able to recoup expenses, as well as run into all or most of the problems listed above.
• Getting a contract to re-publish a book tends to be more difficult than getting a contract to publish a book to begin with.

One final very important comment. Sometimes, scammers will pose as traditional publishers and contact self-publishers, saying that their book is so good it needs to be traditionally published and offer to do so. Beware! There are too many nefarious firms that succeed through flattery, leaving authors with empty pockets and dashed hopes. Check out Writer, Beware for a list of these (keeping in mind that the list is not complete).

Want more specific information on this topic? Check out this blog post from Tough Nickel.

Lesson for today's Tuesday talk: If you want a traditional publishing contract, hold out for that from the beginning until the end (getting it). 
Many self-published authors started out looking for a traditional publisher and not finding one in the first few months (or years), gave up and published their own book. If your book is good enough, you should hold out for however long it takes (while actively seeking) to get a traditional contract. Don't poison the waters by self-publication.

Read more posts about publishing HERE.