Digital first publishers

[thelastspottywelly]

Hi everyone. I currently have a book out on submission and have had interest from a couple of the digital first publishers, which they want to talk more about next week. I was really excited about this but am getting the sense my agent is more hesitant, and he wants me to really think it through before agreeing to anything.

This is my first book, so I’m a bit bewildered by all this. Is anyone published by one of these imprints and can shed a bit more light on it for me? I don’t even know what I should be thinking through, I’m just delighted that someone wants to publish my book, to be totally honest. I want to make an informed choice, though. I don’t feel I can ask my agent about it (probably just me being silly), but my reasoning is that he submitted to them in the first place so it can’t be such a bad thing, can it?

Would really appreciate any views or advice on the matter. Thanks in advance.

Congratulations, OP, on getting an agent and a manuscript ready for submission and interest. This is a learning experience so don't be reluctant to ask your agent open, friendly questions which I'd hope an agent would welcome in your career partnership. It appears at face value mildly interesting for the agent to submit to a publisher then be reluctant if they show interest though it might be the agent thought the money and your career trajectory would be best if a traditional publisher expressed interest and the digital first were back ups or fall backs.

Good luck.

I suspect - being cynical - that your agent thinks you’ll get a much lower advance than with trad publishing, hence their cut will be less. Conversely, for you, the royalties are often pretty good with digital first.

Don’t be afraid to ask your agent anything! You need an open dialogue.

Digital first can work really well indeed for genre (crime series, romance etc) and less well for, say, stand-alone fiction. If they’re a good digital first publisher they’ll have a huge marketing reach on all the ebook channels. You will probably need to be active on your social media to build up an audience - that’s true of trad publishing too but more important for digital first.

Good luck! Sounds really promising.

Thank you so much for your comments, I ha have to say I had the same thought about the agent cut. I can be a bit of a negative Nancy though, so I might have been reading into things in entirely the wrong way.

In reality I’d be thrilled if anyone wanted to publish my book, so will definitely keep an open mind and try to be more open with my agent in the future. Thanks again