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.