CEO at MindStir Media, an award-winning hybrid publishing and marketing company.
I’m contacted often by aspiring authors and entrepreneurs looking to publish a book with regard to the various publishing routes that can be taken these days. A book for an entrepreneur is like a business card on steroids. There is perhaps no greater indicator of credibility and expertise than a successfully published book.
But publishing can be highly confusing due to the available options and companies out there, so it’s always my goal to simplify the process by explaining the different options in layman’s terms and discussing the pros and cons of these avenues. While I think most people have heard of self-publishing and traditional publishing, not necessarily many have heard of hybrid publishing as a worthwhile option.
Below, I describe those three options in detail so you can make an informed decision when it comes to publishing your own book.
Well-Known Book Publishing Options
In recent years, self-publishing has been all the rage for aspiring entrepreneur authors. Self-publishing a book allows the content creator to keep creative control and a high percentage of book sales, upwards of 70%. Perhaps most importantly, self-published authors retain their publishing rights and copyright. Keeping your intellectual property as an author and entrepreneur is more important now than ever because of all the ways you can monetize your content nowadays.
For instance, authors have created podcasts, courses and blogs based on their books. If another entity owned your book, you’d have to run these promotional avenues by the powers that be. So, self-publishing is an incredibly attractive and sometimes lucrative venture for many. The major drawback with self-publishing, though, is the need to wear the many hats it takes to publish a book, from designer to editor to publisher and marketer.
Then there’s traditional publishing. Anyone who has tried to go this route will likely tell you that it’s not for the faint-hearted and there’s never a guarantee of publication. For starters, most traditional publishers require you to contact them through a literary agent—this means that you need to have an agent representative to begin with. Sometimes finding an agent to represent you can be more difficult than landing a publishing deal with a publisher because literary agents are deluged with submissions and notoriously overlook some diamonds in the rough.
Even if you get agent representation and said agent sells your book to a traditional publisher, you are essentially selling your rights to your book, which means that the publisher can reshape your book as it sees fit. Not only will you relinquish those rights to a publisher, but your royalties will probably be somewhere around 10%. It’s not uncommon for a traditionally published author to see less than a dollar per book sale. However, traditional publishing still has its place in the publishing industry.
Books published traditionally usually receive brick-and-mortar distribution through a major distributor, and those authors also receive the support of an entire publishing team. Traditional publishing is a much more collaborative approach versus self-publishing where the buck stops with you.
Introducing Hybrid Book Publishing
Both self-publishing and traditional publishing are viable options for authors and entrepreneurs alike. But there’s also an option that blends both sides together: hybrid book publishing. This form of publishing is quickly picking up steam in the publishing world because it takes the best of traditional publishing and self-publishing and fuses them together. Hybrid publishers allow you to keep your rights, creative control and royalties while working with a professional publishing team of project managers, editors and marketing experts.
Hybrid Publisher Criteria
There are some widely accepted pieces of criteria you should look for in a hybrid publisher, including:
• Selectivity. If the hybrid publisher you’re considering approves every book, that’s a sign that the company isn’t truly a hybrid publisher. Selectivity allows the publisher to produce quality products by only focusing on projects with merit.
• Editorial guidelines. Part of the issue with self-publishing is that it’s completely self-policed. This means that some self-published authors bypass the editing stage altogether, producing a subpar book product. With a hybrid publisher, however, professional editing is a requirement in order to meet a certain standard expected by consumers. After all, the hybrid publisher is putting its logo on your book and representing it to the public. It needs to be a professional product or it will reflect poorly on the company and author involved.
• Rights retention. As mentioned previously, authors should expect to keep all publishing rights and copyrights when hiring a hybrid book publisher. If a hybrid publisher is asking for exclusive rights, that’s not a hybrid publisher; it’s a traditional publisher.
• Distribution. A hybrid publisher should have a relationship with a legitimate book distributor like Ingram, one of the larger distributors out there, or Baker & Taylor, which specializes in supplying books to libraries. While you may not realistically expect to see your book in Walmart or brick-and-mortar stores everywhere, it’s a realistic expectation that physical stores are able to purchase your book for resale. But stores won’t usually buy unless there is a distributor involved.
• High royalty rates. Hybrid publishers should offer greater royalty rates than traditional publishers. So, anticipate 50% royalties or more. There is no concrete royalty rate that all hybrid publishers must adhere to, but in my opinion, you should never accept a rate lower than 20%.
Now that you’re armed with knowledge about the publishing options available in today’s literary landscape, including hybrid publishing, my hope is that you’ll be able to make the right decision for you.
Obviously, I’m biased as an owner of a hybrid publisher, but my intention in this article is to lay out the information so you can decide for yourself. For some, self-publishing and essentially becoming your own publisher will be the right route. For others, traditional publishing is the way to go. But for those of you who are searching for a different approach, an option that blends the two worlds together may be worth considering.
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