TAKE DOWN SELF-PUBLISHED WORK BEFORE QUERYING?

[escribo]

I self-published my first book and intended to do the same with my second, but my editor thinks it's very strong and wants me to try for an agent. Do I need to take down my first book at Amazon and any references to it elsewhere? It hasn't been a strong seller, so I don't want its low ranking and dearth of reviews (19, average 4.3) to work against me.

Thanks for any feedback.

[RJP]

Why don't you ask your agent what he/she thinks?

Personally, I don't think having 19 reviews on Amazon looks bad for a self-published book. There are traditionally published books that don't have 19 reviews. (I mean, even if many of those reviews were from your family and friends, the agents and publishers don't know that.)

Maybe you're worried they'll spy on the sample pages on Amazon? If the writing is considerable worse then you might want to remove it for that reason.