Different circumstance, but I self-published my education book under the Creative Commons sharealike-attribution license, and that actually helped me get the ne

Different circumstance, but I self-published my education book under the Creative Commons sharealike-attribution license, and that actually helped me get the next edition published by an established education publisher, Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley & Sons. I don't know about strict academic publishers. But everyone else is broke. If you present them something finished, something that looks like a real book, that may well help you get published. Just make sure there's a clause in your contract that acknowledges the existence of your copyleft book and makes clear that that does not affect your deal with them whatsoever.