A follower on twitter asked me to respond to a few different blog posts about self-publishing, querying agents, and “legacy” publishing. The Writer’s Digest article Life After Self-Publishing addresses the possibility of finding an agent for a self-published book, and it's…well, naïve pap. Sorry, but it is. If you’re self-publishing a book because you think it’s a great first step towards New York and traditional publishing success, you’re going to be in for a very rude surprise.
Publishing is a very, very conservative business. You know when agents say they only represent books they love and editors encourage people to write great books to get published? Sure, you can do that, but what they’re really saying is “Write a book I can sell.”
It’s challenging for a self-published book to move on to mainstream success. That’s why, for some authors, acquiring a literary agent to represent the book is often considered the next logical step.
That’s not true. An agent doesn’t want your self-published book. Not even a little bit. There are a few quotes from agents in the articles that indicate otherwise, but I’ve never seen anything to convince me that’s actually the case. Agent sell the first rights to publishers, and if you’ve already published your book anywhere in the world, they can’t sell those rights. The Writer’s Digest article never mentions that very fundamental point, and in many cases, it's a deal breaker.
