I have a retired friend who wrote his autobiography primarily for his family and friends, and asked me read it for suggestions and proofing.
To my surprise, he has lead an incredible life about which I knew nothing, and it is fascinating. What’s more, I was also surprised that he writes very well.
He’s aware of the possibility of self-publishing, which was all he intended, but now I’m wondering if it would not be succesful as a commercial enterprise.
Is there any market at all for autobiographies of unknown and non-famous people, no matter how interesting?
If there is, what is the best route to take? Sending the manuscript to publishers or agents? Do any of them even look at unsolicited manuscripts from unknown writers?
Any hope at all?
Autobiographies of people who aren’t famous are a tough sell to commercial publishers. There’s always a chance, but you’d be beating the odds.
Probably the best first step is to contact a legitimate agent who has sold autobiographies to major publishers in the past (they should be very forthcoming in giving you this information: legitimate publishers always brag about their sales; scammers refuse to talk about them or their clients). Let them know the situation and see what they say.
One possibility is to self publish a few copies and send those to a real publisher. There are places such as lulu which can do very small print runs for a pretty low price (~$10 for 300 pages).
I would strongly recommend against this. No publisher would look at a self-published bound book unless you can show that it has already sold multiple thousands of copies.
Assuming you can find a publisher who will accept unagented manuscripts - a near-impossibility these days but not a total impossibility - send them an old fashioned print, double-spaced, non-proportional font manuscript. Better yet, follow Chuck’s advice and send it to an agent. Memoirs are very popular right now, so there is a chance that a very well written one might catch somebody’s eye.
But only if it is on paper.
From a marketing point of view, even the best self-published books have probably reached anyone who is actually interested in them (even if that group is the author’s family).
If you see 10-20K copies, it means there’s an audience for the book, and a publisher might try to expand on it.
It also doesn’t help that the vast majority of self-published books are lousy: they come to a publisher with the expectation they will be lousy.
Remember: self-publishing only works if you have a targets nonfiction book of limited, but real interest. You can make some money on “A History of Golf in the Capital District,” if you market it well (in golf shops, for instance), but not on your epic novel.
For one thing, bound books are totally worthless to an editor. They can’t be marked up with instructions to the printer, the word and chapter lengths are hard to judge by normal standards, and they are far harder to read for editing - you can’t place pages side by side for comparison.
It’s also hard for an editor to know what the status of the book is. Has the book been published or not? Is it already on sale? Has the market been limited?
A bound book is also a violation of the rules of manuscript submission, which are widely available and should be found on any publisher’s site. If the most basic rules for submission have been flouted what else might be wrong?
And publishing is an innately conservative profession. Manuscripts are a known commodity. They are the currency that publishing deals in. Bound books are like counterfeit money. They are not going to be accepted, and the passing of them will reflect on the individual.
There have been a few cases of successful self-published books attracting a large enough audience that a mainstream publisher becomes interested. An editor may read such a book, but would still need an actual manuscript to put into the production process. If you’re starting from scratch, a manuscript is the only way to go.