Agents and the Kindle

DomOssiah

DomOssiah

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Jun 18, 2011
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Hi there ... :)

Having done the agency rounds, I decided to revise my novel, convert it into an e-book and post it on the Kindle book store. I've managed to land a few sales and some encouraging comments emailed back to me (I was quite chuffed actually :rolleyes:), so thought I might try again with a handful of literary agents I didn't try the first time around.

My question is, what do agents feel about books on the Kindle bookstore? Do you think that would put them off?

If so, then I have a bit of a dilemma… :confused:
 
Yes, you do have a problem. Publishers won't look at books that have already been published unless they have already racked up impressive sales figures (thousands of copies). And if publishers won't look at something, an agent isn't going to waste his or her time sending it to them.

This is a question a writer should ask before he or she self-publishes. If it's any consolation, most don't.
 
So, no dilemma at all then really :-/

This is a question a writer should ask before he or she self-publishes. If it's any consolation, most don't.
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No consolation needed, but thanks anyway. Now all I have to do is shift a couple of thousand copies ... :)
 
But surely if you get those few thousand sales it's ammunition when taking book 2 to a publisher.
 
Achieving sales of five or six thousand is very hard for a self-published writer. It takes an enormous amount of work to accomplish that, and even then there has to be something vastly appealing about the book, plus the element of good luck and timing. Most self-published books sell less than a hundred copies, and poor sales can have a negative impact on your ability to sell your next book.

Once you've self-published, you've as good as committed yourself to a huge amount of time spent promoting it and finding opportunities to promote it ... otherwise, you've just thrown the book away in terms of using it to jump-start a career.
 
Writers Blocked said:
But surely if you get those few thousand sales it's ammunition when taking book 2 to a publisher.
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That's an excellent point. You could be right, but then again, if I was selling by the thousand on the Kindle, I would probably be less inclined to go the traditional publishing route.

It's a tricky one.
 
Teresa Edgerton said:
Achieving sales of five or six thousand is very hard for a self-published writer. It takes an enormous amount of work to accomplish that, and even then there has to be something vastly appealing about the book, plus the element of good luck and timing. Most self-published books sell less than a hundred copies, and poor sales can have a negative impact on your ability to sell your next book.

Once you've self-published, you've as good as committed yourself to a huge amount of time spent promoting it and finding opportunities to promote it ... otherwise, you've just thrown the book away in terms of using it to jump-start a career.
Click to expand...

I figured the success stories I'd read on self publishing weren't typical.
 
And even the ones who are enormously successful tend to sign with traditional publishing houses eventually, because they want to start spending the bulk of their time writing more books rather than on marketing and promotion.
 
seaside said:
I figured the success stories I'd read on self publishing weren't typical.
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Can't say I've heard of many either. Probably a lot more common for established authors to dabble in self-publishing after they've become successful.
 
Yup, that's probably where I went wrong. I should have tried the smaller publishing houses before going the Kindle route.

I know a lot of writers who are not keen on Google books. I think it's the wholesale copying and publishing that I'm not comfortable with.
 
Stephen Palmer said:
Google Books have twice had one of my novels on their site, despite my explicit - and acknowledged - instructions to take it off. Decent of them to bother to do their research... :rolleyes:
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Hmph. Not the first time I've heard that. I imagine they'd say that they can't check every book, which is sort of convenient for them really.
 
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