Finding a Publisher for Your Self-Published Book

INSIDER INSIGHT!

Finding a Publisher for Your Self-Published Book

If you're one of those hardy souls who just forged ahead and self-published your book, you would think that publishers would be eager to talk to you about the prospect of taking it on. But like so many other aspects of this rather arcane business, that's usually not the case. If anything, publishers tend to be more skeptical about self-published or already published works.

The reason seems to be that publishers don't trust anyone else's judgment — unless it's already proven to produce sure-fire successes. Success in this case is measured by sales — how many books sold — rather than anything else. All those stories you hear about self-published books or previously published books (such as James Neale Walsh's Conversations with God) have one thing in common: The books were already selling phenomenal numbers of copies before any larger publisher ever showed an interest in them. If these authors had approached publishers before their sales reached many thousands of copies, it's quite likely that they would have been rejected.

Why do editors and agents often reject self-published books?

They operate under these assumptions:

It would have been published commercially if it were worthwhile.

Only weak projects are self-published.

It's a wacky idea or has no market.

It probably didn't sell enough copies to impress us.

The author doesn't have the profile we need to publish this book.

These assumptions are often true, but not in all cases. Many times publishers can't see the potential in projects that come across their desks, much less account for the tireless energy that some self-published authors are willing to devote to promoting and marketing their books. But it is true that many self-published books are weak in one way or another and don't do well in the marketplace. We hear constantly about the exceptions, but that's because they are exceptional.

Your best strategy for combating publishers' objections is a well-thought-out book proposal.

If you're proposing that a publisher take on your book, you need to create a compelling case for doing so.There's a fine art to spinning the story of your book's previous history and demonstrating how a new publisher could build on its current success. That's why the proposal is important: It allows you to position your book in the market, present yourself as the ideal author, and talk about what more you can do to promote it and increase its sales.

It's not realistic to expect that a vague query letter will capture publishers' interest in a self-published book. Remember, you're making them a business proposition. No matter how close the book is to your heart (or your business), publishers care most about whether it's a viable commercial venture.