Publish on Lulu & then publish traditionally?

[lisaaho]

What happens if after you self-publish through Lulu your book is picked up by an agent for traditional publishing?

[Tracey Morait]

Got a feeling it can't be done. The publisher has to buy the rights to publish and your book will have been published already.

The only exception I've seen is for the likes of Jane Austen whose works are reprinted under Penguin and Wordsworth classics but she's been a bit on the dead side for over 70 years.

If you've been picked up by an agent and publisher they can commission you for another work. It's their hard luck if you tried to go down the traditional route with your self-published book and they missed out first time.

[michael_aaron_casares]

Yeah, I think the best route to go is to find out about buying the rights from Lulu, then going into a second print. That or, as lisaaho suggested, get them to publish another work; it sounds like it's worth a shot! Good luck  :-)

[Pipa]

I don't think Jane Austen  ever published her works on Lulu Tracey!

Agents never touch any work publsihed on Lulu - not even for itinerent scouses!

[Tracey Morait]

God, you're sharp, aren't you, missus? I'm bleeding all over my keyboard!

Who are you, anyway, KA's moll?

And how do you know an agent wouldn't look at a work published on Lulu? Lulu isn't going away anytime soon, trad publishers need to wake up to the fact that many writers out there aren't interested in making the money that lines the publishing houses' pockets, they're interested in people reading the rubbish they write.*

Rubbish like mine, actually!

 +Disclaimer: self-publishing does not mean you write rubbish. So don't think it!

[Tracey Morait]

And you know very well the Jane Austen scenario was about republishing works under more than one publishing house.

And there's no such word as 'itinerent'. 'itinerant' means to travel.

[Maggie]

Lisa,

Jeremy originally self-published on Lulu and was subsequestly picked up by a major publisher and signed on for a few more books.

Here is his book on Amazon.

[Eric Begbie]

To get back to the original question:

As you hold the copyright for any book you write and publish on Lulu, there is nothing to stop you then offering the right to publish it to a conventional publisher. (Just as you can publish the same book with several POD publishers, Kindle, etc., etc.). The copyright is yours to do what you like with.

BUT - two points

1. It is highly unlikely that a normal conventional publisher will want to publish a book that has already been POD-published. (That's not to say you shouldn't try.)

2. You are likely to make a lot less money in royalties from a conventional publisher. For example, the last conventionally published book that I wrote brought me an advance of £2000 and then only another £600 in royalties despite selling over 8,000 copies. In contrast, a Lulu-published book has brought me more than double the income by selling only half as many copies. The reason is that conventional publishers have huge overheads and therefore pay much smnaller royalties per copy.

[Pipa]

Tracey, I'm too old to be anyones Moll plus I'm from the other side of the Irish Sea. 
As for knowing why an agent wouldn't look - I use to work for a major publishing and talk with a number of agents on an almost daily basis.

[Tracey Morait]

Then if they wouldn't look they aren't worth bothering with in the first place.

I don't see that it's worth the effort to try to get a SP or POD book published with a conventional publisher. It's published, end of, and although the author may hold the copyright wouldn't the publishers have to do some sort of deal with contracts etc? Wouldn't that get messy? Or maybe that's America...

The only advantage I see for getting a book conventionally published is that they take the headache out of marketing? (Not my forte!)