Reframing Hybrid vs. Traditional Publishing

It’s all about the distribution . . .

Last June, when I wrote The Definitive Difference Between Hybrid Publishing and Self-Publishing, I didn’t do a follow-up to compare hybrid and traditional because the difference is so dependent on distribution. I’ve written about distribution at length, and people have let me know it’s a very “in the weeds” thing to write about. And, it’s important. It’s an essential thing for authors to educate themselves about since it answers the question of how a given publisher intends to sell your books—and to what channels.

If you’d asked me in the early days about the difference between hybrid and traditional, I would have “the money and the control.” I could have told you the story about my utter shock and dismay when I first launched She Writes Press with no distribution, and really understood for the first time what distribution meant. I’d worked in publishing by that point for 13 years, but it was only when I found myself distribution that I understood its power to push books into the marketplace. Without distribution, the consumers pull, which is fine, but it’s also a recipe for selling hundreds as opposed to thousands of books.

When it comes to choosing a publisher, money talks—obviously. For years I’ve positioned hybrid publishing as a back-up plan to traditional publishing for that very reason. If an author tells me they’re moving forward with a publisher who’s paying an advance over having to pay, who am I to talk them out of it?

Except these days, it’s not so simple. Especially now when so many traditional contracts are zero-advance contracts. And more especially now for me personally, six months into our distribution relationship with Simon & Schuster, that I’m getting an even deeper education into the power and mechanics of traditional distribution.

---

I’m at the San Francisco Writers’ Conference this weekend, and as is always the case at conferences, the people on the ground inspire my posts. I met with an author yesterday who submitted to She Writes Press, but was recently offered a traditional contract—not from a Big Five publisher, but from a small publisher who specializes mostly in academic books.

Given what her book is, and given who this other publisher is, I honestly believe she’ll sell more books with us. Academic and university presses are solid options, but if they don’t have the capacity to get their books into trade (ie, commercial/retail) markets, this should matter to authors whose goal is to hit those targets.

For years I’ve been touting the importance of distribution when it comes to comparing publishing models. Rather than traditional vs. nontraditional, the better comparison to consider are presses with and without distribution (and I count publishers that do their own distribution as presses with distribution). But even among those publishers that have (and do their own) distribution, not all distribution is created equal. If you’re writing what’s called a “trade book,” meaning a book you want to hit bookstores and reach regular readers, you need a distributor that knows how to get books into wholesale, library, and retail channels. Too few authors are looking at this all-important measure, or considering what will happen to their book in the hands of one publisher over another. The “supply chain” has a boring ring to it, but in book publishing, it should be authors’ number one question to their prospective publisher: how will you get my book to market?

I want to take you on a quick jaunt down my memory lane—to 2014 when She Writes Press first secured distribution with Ingram Publisher Services. At the time, I’d been working in publishing since 2000, and I’d only ever worked with Publishers Group West (PGW) as a distributor. I’d held two jobs to that point (working for North Atlantic Books and Seal Press) and both publishers had PGW for distribution. But PGW in 2014 wasn’t willing to take the risk on a hybrid press. The whole concept was new to them, and we had a limited sales history to stand on. So, they suggested maybe Ingram Publisher Services (IPS). And IPS did. But then, in 2016, Ingram Publisher Services acquired PGW, and PGW started selling our list, the very books they couldn’t or wouldn’t have taken on two years earlier. By 2022, IPS sunsetted, and PGW formally became our distributor. It was an interesting turn of events, and I was curious about how PGW felt this many years later with a hybrid publisher in their ranks. When I asked the head of indie sales her feelings about hybrid, she gave me a bit of a puzzled look, as if she hadn’t considered it, maybe ever. She said, “Your books sell.” The message to me was clear: the sales force doesn’t care about the business model as long as they can sell the books.

Out here in internet land there’s a lot of talk about whether hybrid is good or bad or right or wrong for a given author. When I think about the conversations that matter to authors, much more important than what us industry watchers say are how booksellers and book buyers feel and act. Since moving to Simon & Schuster for distribution, I’ve not once been asked about my business model. The sales force doesn’t care. Their job is to sell, and our job is to provide them with books they’re proud to sell. That’s the reciprocity, and we’re all doing our jobs.

---

A long-standing analogy I use when talking about publishing models is to compare them to schools. If The Big Five (Penguin Random House, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, MacMillion, and HarperCollins) are the Ivy Leagues. It’s still a great analogy, but I’m changing my tune these days on the “back-up plan” language. I was a good student, and I never even considered Harvard or Yale. I went to community college for two years—by choice—and it was amazing. I never felt less-than for having made that choice. It spring-boarded me to George Washington University, and I’ve always felt proud to be a GWU grad. Publishing options are similar. Hybrid-published authors are increasingly choosing hybrid as a first choice. Many are choosing hybrid over traditional publishing because of control and access and because the potential to earn back their expenses is higher than earning out their advance.

And look, it will always and forever be the case that there’s not one right path for any given author. Yesterday, a writer in the session I taught on “mindsets and habits of successful authors” raised her hand to share that she’s a competitive surfer. She’s writing a memoir—and she’s also a very competitive person. For her, it’s all about reaching the pinnacle, and the Big Five are the pinnacle. She would break herself, she confessed, to do what it takes to join their ranks.

I certainly was not there to discourage her from her publishing dream. To this aspiring author, I said, Go for it, but don’t let the Big Five be the be-all, end-all. I worry for authors who are willing to lay it all down if they don’t clear that very high barrier to entry, especially when there’s so much else to consider and choose from.

What authors are looking for in a publisher and what’s right for a given person is varied, and it’s hard to know what you want because the publishing ecosystem is vast and sometimes confusing. And so, I recommend getting out into the real world when it comes to assessing your publishing options. Talk to a bookstore owner, a bookseller, or a librarian. Book publishing is confoundingly subjective and ever-shifting, but the good news for authors is this—all that matters if your final product. The professionally published book. With that in mind, there’s more than one path to publishing that you can stand behind with pride.