: Re: Does self publishing via Amazon or similar services make your book ineligible for later acceptance by a publisher? I have a non-fiction book that is ready for publishing, and I am weighing between

@Lee1909368

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Simple answer: No.

You may ask why not. The reason is because if you and a publisher sign an agreement to publish a book together you will have to sign a contract with them. Many publishers issue a boilerplate which includes a clause demanding first serial publishing rights to your work but this is as easy to exclude or waive as putting a line through it or signing a copy of the contract in which that clause has been removed.

The question becomes why would it be in a publisher's interest to remove that clause? The hard fact is that usually it is because the author has some kind of proven success in selling their books without the aid of a publisher beforehand.

Lauren mentioned Hocking but of course she is not alone in the club of people who signed on the dotted line with that clause removed. Hugh Howey is now published by Arrow but Wool went up on Smashwords first.

Perhaps more surprising to many people Dan Brown hawked copies of his first novel "Digital Fortress" out of the boot of his car before a publisher agreed to work with him. I'm not sure whether they initially retained his services to write his second book Deception Point only but they certainly signed a distribution deal regards Fortress when the Da Vinci Code hit the big time.

On a smaller scale again Matthew Reilly's Contest was initially a self-published work where the numbers worked out to, assumedly mutual, benefit and so the book was re:published by a big house after Reilly had earned his pips selling the work off his own back.

So, it is possible, and not just for people making dump trucks of money, but the devil will always be in the details.

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