question for published authors

[cellio]

I have published authors among my readers; can any of you answer this question about how publishers view prior self-publishing? If you self-publish on Amazon and then later seek a conventional publication contract, are you out of luck because of the prior publication? (If you can provide a supported answer, rather than speculation, I encourage you to do it there. And if you do it in the next few days you might pick up a bounty, if you care about Stack Exchange reputation.)

Comments

[hrj.livejournal.com]

The rule for fiction for professional publishers (i.e., ones where people are making a living publishing books) is that self-publication counts as prior publication. Prior publication is not an absolute bar to subsequent professional publication (John Scalzi is a notable example of an exception and there are other novelists who have had self-published books picked up by professional publishers). However those exceptions are rare. My own contracts (with a small press) stipulate the amount of a contracted book that can have appeared in public prior to publication. ("In public" does not include things like beta-readers and writing groups.) The average fiction writer should assume that any prior publication makes a book ineligible for consideration by publishers.

Non-fiction is different.

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

From the non-fiction side... I don't know, never having self-published. Parts of my book had been released to students in my classes, and to beta-testers at other schools, but there had been no "public" release before publication on dead trees.

On a peripheral note... I specifically looked for a publisher who would (a) keep costs down, and (b) eventually allow me to do other things with the book, like put it online as donationware. As it happened, the only publisher that nibbled also met both of those criteria. I think in four years I've made one or two kilobucks, so it's not a rich living, but that's OK: I'm in academia, so I was motivated more by wordfame all along.