Hybrid Publishing Goes Mainstream

A Look at the Business Model of Authors Equity, a New Nontraditional Imprint That Few Are Calling Hybrid—Yet

This week’s big publishing news is personal. A new publishing company has emerged like a phoenix out of the ashes of the 2023 Penguin Random House layoffs and buyouts. Its name is Authors Equity, and it’s a hybrid publisher.

The thing that gives this publisher more clout than others already in this orbit are its founders. Madeline McIntosh, former chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S., Nina von Moltke, former president and director of strategic development for Penguin Random House U.S., and Don Weisberg, former CEO of Macmillan Publishers, all left their previous posts between 2022-2023.

It's possible that reporters covering industry news don’t care about or don’t know about the intense feelings surrounding emerging publishing models, or all the work that’s been done (notably by the Independent Book Publishers Association - IBPA) to codify hybrid publishing, but reading the coverage about Authors Equity this week, I couldn’t help but note that only Publishers Weekly gave a nod to the fact that the model already has a name. Jim Milliot, who’s a former Board member of the IBPA, wrote, “As its name implies, the publisher will operate outside of traditional publishing business models, offering no advances but paying authors a high percentage of a book’s profits—a model used by some other types of hybrid publishers.”

Yes, indeed.

When I entered the hybrid space in 2012 with the launch of She Writes Press, there wasn’t a consensus for what we were doing. This middle-way publishing was a gray area between self-publishing and traditional publishing. The only publisher I knew of that did what I was trying to do was my former employer, North Atlantic Books, a traditional publisher that cut what it called “co-publishing” and “distribution” deals. The primary difference between these two contracts came down to money. Co-publishing authors often got zero advances with 50% royalties while distribution authors invested in their own projects, often also paying for printing, for the promise of as high as 70% royalties.

I wasn’t reinventing the wheel, and I later discovered Greenleaf Book Group had a model that mirrored North Atlantic’s nontraditional contracts. So while I welcome Authors Equity to the ranks, it’s important to name what they’re doing as hybrid. Much of the language in this week’s coverage of Authors Equity describes hybrid’s core positions—they don’t have to rely on the same measures and metrics of traditional publishing, they have low overhead and rely mainly on freelancers, and they give authors the lion’s share of the profits. Many hybrid publishers have been fighting for years for legitimacy—and getting pushback every step of the way. That said, we have paved the way, and Authors Equity will be the fourth nontraditional publisher after Forefront Books, Collective Book Studio, and She Writes Press/SparkPress to secure a distribution deal from Simon & Schuster. (A quick historical aside: When I shopped for distribution in 2013, my first choice was Publishers Group West, which distributed North Atlantic Books, and later Seal Press, where I worked for nine years. But they turned us down because of our business model, suggesting I approach Ingram Publisher Services instead. I did, and gratefully they accepted us. We were their first-ever hybrid distribution client, and our success propelled us along.)

We don’t yet know what the flow of money is or will be at Authors Equity. The most amount of space dedicated to the press’s financials can be found in Publishers Lunch:

McIntosh says authors will receive “the lion’s share” of profits—in the range of 60 percent to 70 percent, “people familiar with the company’s royalty payout” confirmed to the WSJ—but no advance. She tells PL, “While deal terms vary by book and are confidential between the publisher and author, that is the right ballpark.” (That’s after expenses, including manufacturing and third-party distribution fees.) Authors’ proceeds will be paid monthly as well.

Publishers Lunch also reported that the company is “majority” author funded. It’s unclear whether this means that authors will subsidize their own projects, or whether projects will be subsidized by author-investors. Three authors who’ve been named as investors are James Clear, Louise Penny, and Tim Ferriss. Clear told the New York Times, “I would summarize where it fits in the landscape as: more profits than legacy publishing and better distribution than self-publishing.”

So yes, that well describes exactly where hybrid fits. For years I’ve described what we do at She Writes Press and SparkPress as the best of both worlds (self-publishing and traditional publishing). Hybrid publishing is author-centered by default. If and when authors invest, they expect to have more creative control. But good hybrid publishers also answer to a higher power than the author—and that’s their sales force. Also, reputable hybrid publishers, many of which are run by book industry veterans, will never sacrifice good principles of publishing for an author’s whims.

My hope is that Authors Equity will acknowledge their position as a hybrid publisher because for as much legitimacy has been won over the years, the old truism that a rising tide lifts all boats resonates here. We need all the support we can get. Education helps, which is why the latest educational initiative from the IBPA is so important. The IBPA Guide to Publishing Models and Author Pathways (the IBPA Publishing MAP) was also announced this week, though it didn’t receive any coverage in the New York Times. It is, however, an important tool to help the industry and authors alike make sense of the world of publishing as it changes and morphs.

Publishing is complex and ever creative. New publishing models, by and large, will be hybrid as we move into the future because very few people looking to start publishing companies have the deep pockets or investors it takes to compete in traditional publishing. In recent years only Zibby Books (fueled by dollars from The Blackstone Group) and Row House Publishing (propelled by community support and fundraising) have managed to navigate how to offer advances to authors in an industry whose profit margins are razor thin even when the publisher is not doling out 60-70% royalties to its authors.

In closing, I’ll say that hybrid has come such a long way. The publishing industry is more accepting of nontraditional models than it’s ever been. Book people, as we call ourselves, ostensibly want the same thing—which is for our books not to face barriers and to be able to reach readers on the power of the message and the story. The business model itself is not of concern to readers. They care about a well-edited book, a strong design/package, and a book’s capacity to connect. I’ve long desired for the industry to measure books by these same metrics, and to care about the books more than the business model. Authors Equity’s emergence into the nontraditional space should add juice to an idea that’s long been championed by the IBPA: judge a book by the book, not the business model.