The Risky Business of Hybrid Publishing

The role of money, relationships, reputation, and access in the third-way publishing world

She Writes Press is featured in the Nov/Dec issue of Poets & Writers—and I’m thrilled. I knew it would be a measured piece, and it is. I also knew that any magazine feature about the hybrid business model would be in part a critique about the money, and it is.

The more established hybrid publishing gets, the more the legitimate heads of houses have settled in. Ten and eleven years ago, I was fighting all the time to prove ourselves. Today, I don’t have to. Our books and deep backlist of 1000+ titles speak for themselves.

Still, hybrid continues to irk some people, notably industry folks who see themselves as champions to indie authors. For instance, in 2022, hybrid publishing came under fire by UK-based The Society of Authors, and the model has long been scrutinized by ALLi (The Alliance of Independent Authors). I empathize with the agitation because I get agitated, too. Though what agitates me is not hybrid publishing, of course, but rather the fact that it’s has gotten so diluted in recent years because of how many companies call themselves hybrid publishers when, in fact, they’re not. As the Poets & Writers article rightly notes, “any company with a website and a Kindle Direct Publishing account can call itself a hybrid publisher.”

I do have a bone to pick with the coverage in Poets & Writers, however, because it propagates a false idea that hybrid publishers don’t care about sales. The article cites industry expert Jane Friedman, whose skepticism for hybrid publishing I’ve watched grow over the past few years (evidenced by new caveats on her 2023-24 Paths to Publishing Chart). In Poets & Writers, her criticism of hybrid publishing centers on the question of who takes the risk. “These companies would not survive if authors weren’t paying the bills,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if your book sells. They’ve already made their money.”

If this critique holds validity, it’s because of the aforementioned dilution, but it decidedly does not resonate with those of us who are serious and committed third-way publishers, and there are many.* Usually one can only speak for oneself, but in this case I can speak for myself and the hybrid publishers on this list because I know many of them well. We swap ideas, support each other, and champion each other’s efforts. In particular I will lift up Collective Book Studio’s voice here because founder and publisher Angela Engel and I have been friends and colleagues for over twenty years, and we’re the only two US-based hybrid publishers listed on Friedman’s chart, about whom she qualifies, under the “How they sell” subhead: “Most don’t sell at all. The selling is up to the author. They can get books distributed, but it’s uncommon that books are pitched to retailers without a very significant investment from the author, who must pay for a print run to even have a chance at in-store distribution.”

This part is patently untrue for those of us who are true hybrids. All of our books across both our imprints, She Writes Press and SparkPress, sell into brick-and-mortar stores and libraries, and the selling is explicitly not up to the author. It’s up to the sales force, with the authors supplementing those efforts with publicity and marketing efforts. Sales are central not only to our businesses, but to our reputations. Without sales, a reputable publisher first of all cannot secure traditional distribution. Collective Book Studio and Forefront Books have distribution through Simon & Schuster, and I’ve been saying for years about hybrid that traditional distribution is an important measure for determining legitimacy because publishers that don’t care about sales don’t qualify for distribution. About pitching to sales reps, in fact the exercise of doing so is a seasonal cornerstone of traditional distribution. I attend, in person, two sales meetings for every publishing season, where our reps (people who sell our books into the trade) attentively listen, make suggestions, and offer projections (how many books they think they can sell) for our titles. It’s true that meaningful distribution requires a print run, of course, because without inventory, titles cannot make their way into brick-and-mortar stores. Bookstore buyers need to see that there’s inventory in their systems, on hand, in order to make buys.  

In traditional book publishing, most books fail to “earn out” their advances. Publishers must recoup their expenses (including the author’s advance) before they start paying an author royalties. So, if an author never sees a royalty check, and many do not, that means the publisher lost money on that title. Big publishers survive mainly on backlist books (which refers to their in-print books that they continue to sell, many of which are perennial sellers) and the few big breakouts they invariably publish every year, mostly “sure bets,” like the obscene number of celebrity memoirs that are flooding the marketplace and prescriptive titles by authors with huge followings. So basically, HarperCollins’ literary title that sells through 5000 copies is being subsidized by Jada’s memoir.

In the hybrid model, authors recoup their expenses rather than earn out an advance, but this happens immediately, and the first pay check is always a big one since books (when traditionally distributed) are pre-sold into the marketplace. At She Writes Press, these presales are usually to the tune of anywhere from 200 to 2000 units “pre-sold,” meaning that a retailer purchases these quantities before the book is even printed. Having this information up front is what supports publishers to know what volume to print, and why a press like ours always does offset print runs and does not (and cannot) rely on a print-on-demand business model. 

In the Poets & Writers article, Friedman also said, “You’re paying the middleman, and you’re paying to some extent for not wanting to learn how to do this on your own. It’s not beyond any author, so I would much rather see people take the time to learn how to do it themselves.”

I celebrate this statement. If authors want to take the time to learn to do it themselves, that’s wonderful. This is why organizations like ALLi exist. There is a thriving community of self-published authors out there, and many of them are breaking barriers and publishing beautiful books. The problem is that equal or more numbers are not breaking barriers and are not publishing beautiful books. Self-published authors, famously, don’t know what they don’t know. Those who seek the support of a team of experts and who already have a built-in audience can do quite well. Those who want to make publishing their full-time jobs may benefit from learning the ropes.

Hybrid publishers, however, are not catering to authors who want to learn how to self-publish. Instead, we exist to serve are a pretty specific—and large—group of aspiring authors. These are authors who are shut out of traditional publishing because of traditional publishing’s myopic view of what they think they can sell (ie, sure bets). They’re authors who know they have excellent books with broad readerships, but traditional publishing insists they don’t have a big enough platform (ie, they’re not worth risking on). They’re authors who face implicit biases from traditional publishing (ie, debut authors without a huge following; older authors), and authors who aren’t currently in demand based on trends and other arbitrary measures that publishing houses use to justify their acquisitions. (I did this for thirteen years so I am versed in the whims of the acquisition editor.)

Authors who choose hybrid do so because they want the professionalism the hybrid publisher brings, as well as access, two things self-published authors too often lack. If self-published authors had access, hybrid wouldn’t exist. Reputable hybrid publishers are authors’ ticket to distribution, and distributors are the gatekeepers—to brick-and-mortar stores, libraries, specialty markets, trade reviews, and more.

A couple weeks ago I took a meeting with the head of indie sales at our current distributor when she brought up Girl Friday, a sister hybrid press. Account managers are highly attuned to particular books that are selling well, so she asked if I’d heard about one of their recent books that was very much on her radar. I nodded. I had.  

“I really don’t get how your business model impacts us at all,” she said.

“Exactly,” I replied.

And there’s the point. The people whose job it is to sell our books don’t care about who’s carrying the risk; they care about the formula (positioning, good writing, story, cover design, production, strong metadata, secured publicity) that helps them to do their job, which is to sell books. My job as a hybrid publisher is to ensure that the books we publish nail that formula, and that’s not easily harnessed by newcomers on the scene. This industry does not have a short learning curve—at all.

I understand that raising the question of who carries the risk stems from author advocates not wanting authors to get taken advantage of. That’s a concern I share. But having “skin in the game” is not measured by financial risk alone. In our business model, authors absorb most of the financial risk and in turn receive most of the financial reward when their books succeed. But ask any business owner about how important reputation is, how important quality control is, how important relationships with vendors and buyers and consumers are. There is risk everywhere you look, and our job is to mitigate authors’ financial risk in an collaborative effort to sell our books, which thereby supports them to earn back their expenses. Do they always earn back those expenses? Heck no. But hybrid cannot be held to a different standard than traditional publishing, famously known for the hard reality that most books “fail” (meaning do not earn out). Hybrid publishers are author advocates, too, pushing for access for authors who deserve it because their books are terrific and they need a bigger platform. We lend our brand, our name, our reputation to our authors only when we believe in their books, and that means believing we can sell their books. I cannot and would not pitch a book to our distributor that I believed to be dead on arrival. And herein lies is the reciprocal relationship of our acquisitions process. An author takes a risk with us, and we in turn take a risk on them. This collaboration, this partnership, is the best of both worlds in publishing, as touted, for certain authors who aren’t finding a home in traditional publishing, and who have higher ambitions than self-publishing can possibly offer.

*
The Collective Book Studio
Forefront Books
Köehler Books
Page Two Books
Wonderwell
Girl Friday Books
Amplify Publishing Group

And our own imprints:
She Writes Press
SparkPress