Many years ago, I shared a table at a local book fair with three other self-published authors. I think I sold one book. It was eye-openingly disappointing.
But the real surprise was the woman at the table next to ours. She sat alone behind a stack of hardcovers, looking utterly miserable. I couldn't resist asking her about it.
Her novel had been published by an imprint of a larger publishing house. It was some detective novel. She had an agent. She'd done what so many of us hope to do.
"So why are you here?" I asked.
"My agent told me I should be," she said. "The publisher has no money to promote the book. This is it."
That conversation has stayed with me ever since.
Whether you're traditionally published or self-published, sooner or later most writers discover the same thing: no one is going to care about your book as much as you do.
And the worst part of it is that the publisher almost certainly does have money to do the part of its job that is the whole fucking job.
“There is no money in the budget” is the go-to lie for people who want to say no and not be asked why, because the real reason is socially unacceptable.
My small indie publisher made that quite clear up front. He really is operating on the fringe. At the same time, he’s entered my book in several contests — two of which I won something in — and put me in touch with radio interviewers. I also find that when I mention his name, indie bookstores suddenly have available slots for readings and signings.
All of those conferences are grifts because no one there has any connections or platforms, and none of the agents are looking for good books but connections (for themselves too; many of those agents are also novelists which I despise). They are looking for an easy payday with no expectation of working with anyone. I’ve seen too many friends be engaged for a time only to be ignored shortly thereafter.
This is absolutely true. Publishing runs on leverage and social status. You don’t have leverage, no matter how well you write, because the loss of not publishing a great book is basically zero. You don’t have social status unless you can convince people who do have it that you’re one of them.
Your agent may be a wonderful person, but if she’s not one of the 25 agents with the clout to force editors to get off their asses and read, it doesn’t matter.
This is also why the whole “I didn’t love it” line agents use is so insulting and, frankly, weird. You’re not being hired for your subjectivity, but for your objectivity. You don’t have to love the book to do your job. Everyone knows that you despise most of your clients as writers and as people. That’s fine. You show up and do the best you can, because of professionalism. Do lawyers need to “love” their clients? Do doctors refuse to treat people they dislike? My point stands.
Robert’s comment in the thread is the one that will stay with me, that woman sitting behind her own hardcovers at a book fair, agented and traditionally published and completely alone with the marketing. My own fantasy novel outsold the traditional release after the publisher who picked it up folded within the year. Nobody warns you that the deal itself was never the finish line.
It's similar to elected office. A lot of people think being a congressperson would be glamorous, but a monstrous amount of time is spent raising money for the next campaign. People often think legislators don't work all that much, but the fundraising part of the job _is_ the full-time job these days.
And yeah, book touring seems glamorous from a distance, but the "book tours" most authors do are self-funded or on a shoestring budget. The era in which a publisher would spring for business class and a 14-city tour is long over, if it ever existed.
I was a ghostwriter for Random House for a couple of years. I had access to people but what struck me was they only wanted certain kinds of books for women. These books had to mirror other really badly written chicklit because that's what would sell. Publishing is, amongst other things, lazy. 20 years on and I am writing the novel that Charlotte/Annabel/Imogen (they all have the same names) was brilliant but 'women don't like really funny books.' I am currently reading a book that was said to be very funny by the people on the front cover and sold a lot. It is dross, mannered writing. Publishers don't know what they're doing.
I found myself nodding along, thinking things like “of course”, “bloody hell”, “it’s even worse than I thought” and “twas ever thus”. I never know whether to shrug and give up or dig in against all the odds. At the age of 58, having managed to get one novel and a few graphic novels traditionally published, self publishing again feels like the only way to preserve my sanity. Whoever published my stuff, I’m the one who has to do the legwork to promote and do as many book festivals and talks as I can. It’s so blatantly still a class ceiling that we are facing, and the only hope to smash it is with money, and even then it might not make any difference.
I can offer a solution from the world I know: peer-reviewed publications in STEM. Every submission is guaranteed a review by peers - i.e. profs & engineers with proper accolades in the field, who are published authors themselves. You submit a paper and 3-4 months later you get detailed reviews from 3-5 experts, with a recommendation from the editor. All free, by the way. The only catch is that once you become a peer, you're on the hook for this responsibility - I regularly review manuscripts, which takes away from my time without any monetary compensation, and my only reward is knowing that when I submit my own paper, it will be likewise honestly reviewed for free.
I don't know if this approach could work in humanities, I only know that it works in STEM.
To be fair, as someone who also works in STEM, I know a lot of people who complain about unreasonable peer reviews where they feel that effort was not put into reading, and that it was made the submitter's fault. ("Reviewer 2.") But I agree that it's a far better system. Academic peer review is designed to be fair and reasonably anonymous. The flaws exist mostly because, while people work in good faith, they seldom understand each other's contributions. Plus, academics are always extremely time-poor due to the fact that they're doing five different jobs these days.
The main issue in academia is that the career requires fast results, while science requires carefulness. Journals taking months or years to decide is what should happen. The problem is that a tenure case (and a grant book these days) has to be built quickly. The speed needed by humans who have to eat is not the speed that results in good science, and everyone knows it, but no one will fix it, since it requires fixing the academic job market—written off as impossible.
Publishing is fairly naked about it, if you know where to look, but still tells readers that it's a meritocratic system. It's not even a deeply-flawed but probably eventually consistent meritocracy like peer review; it's a social status market, through and through. And yet readers still honestly believe they're being sold the best books that are out there—when in reality they're getting above-average books (sometimes not even that) from people who know people.
Your logic is right. I discussed this from a similar view - https://substack.com/home/post/p-204542448 where the process is nothing more than chance and the true costs is hidden, even from the participants.
I'd love to see self reported stats on what authors spend on submissions and conferences and the rest vs. their success rate. Because I think the 80% rule could be taken another way: there's a small subset of people who are paying to be read and thus basically the only people who are getting read, and then there are a large majority of people who gamble with free querying and get virtually no success. Maybe one could even start to measure the monetary return of trying to pay to play with a dataset like that.
The problem is something you've already said: self-reported. No one who spends $50,000 querying and still can't get published is going to admit it. You can also safely assume that the people who claim querying works and that it worked cheaply are doing that because their agents and editors are watching and they believe it will be good for their careers. They don't believe it, but they see value in saying it.
I'll tell you upfront that the EV of querying is negative. Most published authors don't get the kinds of advances that offset what getting an agent to read costs. There are rich people for whom it is worth five or six figures to be able to say they are published authors. I am not in that camp.
This killed me: "or get $5,000 “book deals” with no promotion and, following atrocious sales results, a need to change one’s name and probably facial bone structure." I hope Clavicular gets his new agent after the nose job.
You’re in a public place, make it a café or bar, and you spot a group in conversation. You think you might like to insert yourself in that conversation.
The group’s members strike you as people you’d want to meet and maybe get to know, perhaps coming away with some sort of relationship for your efforts. One of them even wears a T-shirt bearing the information: “I ♡ elegiac, bleakly comic and somewhat absurdist yet nevertheless realistic fiction (novel-length only)”. Your kind of people.
You step into their circle. You introduce yourself. You tell them you think you know what they’re all about and after they’ve heard what you’re all about, they’ll like you.
Security is summoned.
Distinguishing a literary query from the above scenario is that, unless you’ve foolishly provided the queried with a physical address, no locatable person can be connected to the shame.
Many agents and editors spend much of their time seeking out indie published authors who have sold well and have big social media platforms (think the Romantasy craze). They then offer them six figure deals to publish backlist in special fancy editions, and write a new series. I’ve seen this dozens of times in the last year alone, while most of their existing authors scramble for support.
If you can convince them that you’re exquisite at social media, they’ll give you lots of help you don’t need, in the hope of learning by osmosis the skills you have developed. It has nothing to do with the writing, and everything to do with platform rizz.
Yep. Meanwhile, mid-list authors burn themselves out trying to keep up with ever-changing algorithms on social media in the hopes their publishers will support them.
The really ugly thing is that most traditionally published authors have to quit their day jobs to fulfill the marketing burden that publishers have put on them. Or they get fired, because they're up to 2:30 every night doing work they really shouldn't have to be doing that has nothing to do with writing. And the median TP'd author makes poverty wages.
It's worse than casino gambling. Vegas takes your money, but it doesn't really cause you to lose your career.
A number of mid-list authors I know made pretty decent money back in the day. But what I see now are trad authors opening coaching businesses, doing freelance editing, or teaching writing classes--or now looking at their careers as basically hobbies in retirement. I actually had a pretty decent career for about a minute, back when. Now, my philosophy re: trad publishing is: expect absolutely nothing and you won't be disappointed.
This is why finding a good hybrid publisher is making more sense for many authors today. With a reputable hybrid, you pay to publish, you have a marketing plan agreed in advance and your book receives the same expert treatment as with a traditional press, because good hybrids are using the same editors, cover artists and interior designers as the trad publishers.
Note that I am not talking about those Vanity Presses who lowball an author, then add on extras and finally post the book to the author's own Amazon account. remember, if you are getting 100% of royalties, the "publisher" has no reason to spend any money or effort on promotion.
I'd be very careful about that route. I'm sure it can work, but there are so, so many ways to get scammed as a writer in this game.
You have to find beta readers you trust, and that's hard. Writers usually don't make good beta readers, and most beta readers aren't going to be very good, but the three or four good ones you do find will help you immensely. And then your editing will be a mix of self-editing, AI, and filtered human feedback, with a final pass that must be done by a person who is not you.
In theory, I would love it if someone solved book marketing using AI. In practice, it would probably hurt the world more than it would help me, so I do not wish for such things.
Hi Michael, I think your reply was to a different comment. As a Hybrid Publisher, we hire professional editors, copy editors and proof readers. We manage an ARC reader program for our authors to solicit early feedback. We provide writer coaching to help get a book ready, and also more traditional editing when a book is finished but needs work. We don't accept all books, but when we agree to go forward, our pricing to our author is clear up front and doesn't change
Book marketing is always a collaborative effort. We view our role as bringing the book to the attention of trade partners, while the author (with our support) is involved in reaching readers directly.
So called hybrids are just a glorified printing service. Yes, you will pay for editing and design services through them, but there’s no marketing and no distribution. You still have to do that yourself. I was one of the authors who suffered when Unbound went bust, and they were supposedly the gold standard of hybrids. You won’t see any money come your way if you use a hybrid ‘publisher’.
There are a number of "Hybrid Publishers" who are actually just self-publishing agents. They will get your book ready and then post it to your own amazon account, while promising that you will get 100% of royalties.
True hybrid publishers publish under their own imprints, market and distribute the book, pay revenue shares of up to 70% quarterly, and support author attendance at events, book launches and other promotional activities. Our company supports competition entries, relevant published reviews, special editions, KickStarter events and a variety of other author support services, most without cost to the author. We use our 30% of the revenue share to continue to support the book after publication.
The important thing to be very clear on how your publisher will publisher, through their channels or just your own Amazon site. Ask how they track and pay royalties / revenue shares. Ask about event support. Ask where they list your book beyond Amazon (should be IngramSpark, Draft2Digital, ONIX, and Library Aggregators. DO they market to book clubs (a profitable channel also used by trad publishers) Check on the license you will receive to use your cover design and cover artwork; knowing this will keep you out of trouble.
It is absolutely an unregulated market, and there are no clear definitions for hybrid publishing today, so its up to the author to shop around, check the contracts to see what is actually promised and understand if the quoted price is the final price.
Unbound was not a hybrid publisher according to the standards set by IBPA. It was a crowdfunding platform, which is not the same thing at all.
$7000 is a lot of money - and I see you use Kickstarter to help raise that, so not that different to Unbound. If you do do all that promotion activity you mentioned, that’s more than most traditionally published authors get, so hopefully your authors get their money’s worth.
Yes, publishing is expensive. This is our first trial of kickstarting although we use KickStarter, not our own platform. To be honest, I am not sure if we will do it again.
Our market is generally authors who can afford to pay to publish and who don't want to subject themselves to the long process of agents and trad publishing proposals. Please remember tha the head article of this stream was about how much it can cost to pay fees to agents to try to find a publisher for their books, and my comment was that rather than pay that much to agents, it would be better to look for a hybrid partner.
We are not a good choice for authors who are trying to earn a living writing novels. It is possible to earn a good living, but the route to profits goes through short stories and articles for obscure trade magazines, ghost writing business books, and other writing done for pay.
Do business book “authors” still hire human ghostwriters, now that large language models exist?
This isn’t to say that AI writes nearly as well as a real human author—it obviously doesn’t. But I also question whether the delta matters in the context of books that will be handed out by the shovelful, and never read, at speaking-fees events.
I would never let an AI write a word of text for my literary work, but I could probably get a passable business book out of Claude Code—I’d use an agent for consistency passes—in a few days.
That is a genuinely insightful comment and one that we are struggling with. In the fiction world, the answer is more obvious, but in the credibility book world where books are tools and handed out freely at events, the distinction may not matter as much.
I would always want to see that the author had outlined the book, wrestled with the chapters and themes and that the book had a narrative arc. If they then employ an AI like Claude to fill in the chapter text it might pass. Iny case, as a publisher, we would hand the manuscript to a human editor for review and a human copy editor for final polishing. Even Claude does not write finished copy in my experience.
REALLY GOOD POINT. AI will write biography as well as the best ghostwriters in the business, bar none. Historical NF not so much, but if the author has the facts, LLI has the palaver. Upmarket or literary fiction is totally dependent on Voice. LLI has no Voice. It's a robot, stupid!
That’s a refreshingly honest and full answer. Thank you. All best wishes for your business. It’s easy to be cynical when there are so many scammers about. I’ve had three obviously AI-written emails today alone purporting to be named editors, so you do start to see scammers everywhere.
‘the root issue is rich people having too much money’. The failed French Revolution and every other one I’m aware of proved otherwise. The root’s rooted deeper…
Many years ago, I shared a table at a local book fair with three other self-published authors. I think I sold one book. It was eye-openingly disappointing.
But the real surprise was the woman at the table next to ours. She sat alone behind a stack of hardcovers, looking utterly miserable. I couldn't resist asking her about it.
Her novel had been published by an imprint of a larger publishing house. It was some detective novel. She had an agent. She'd done what so many of us hope to do.
"So why are you here?" I asked.
"My agent told me I should be," she said. "The publisher has no money to promote the book. This is it."
That conversation has stayed with me ever since.
Whether you're traditionally published or self-published, sooner or later most writers discover the same thing: no one is going to care about your book as much as you do.
And the worst part of it is that the publisher almost certainly does have money to do the part of its job that is the whole fucking job.
“There is no money in the budget” is the go-to lie for people who want to say no and not be asked why, because the real reason is socially unacceptable.
My small indie publisher made that quite clear up front. He really is operating on the fringe. At the same time, he’s entered my book in several contests — two of which I won something in — and put me in touch with radio interviewers. I also find that when I mention his name, indie bookstores suddenly have available slots for readings and signings.
All of those conferences are grifts because no one there has any connections or platforms, and none of the agents are looking for good books but connections (for themselves too; many of those agents are also novelists which I despise). They are looking for an easy payday with no expectation of working with anyone. I’ve seen too many friends be engaged for a time only to be ignored shortly thereafter.
This is absolutely true. Publishing runs on leverage and social status. You don’t have leverage, no matter how well you write, because the loss of not publishing a great book is basically zero. You don’t have social status unless you can convince people who do have it that you’re one of them.
Your agent may be a wonderful person, but if she’s not one of the 25 agents with the clout to force editors to get off their asses and read, it doesn’t matter.
This is also why the whole “I didn’t love it” line agents use is so insulting and, frankly, weird. You’re not being hired for your subjectivity, but for your objectivity. You don’t have to love the book to do your job. Everyone knows that you despise most of your clients as writers and as people. That’s fine. You show up and do the best you can, because of professionalism. Do lawyers need to “love” their clients? Do doctors refuse to treat people they dislike? My point stands.
Well, subconsciously maybe, and certainly systemically, doctors refuse a level of care to those (peoples) they dislike. But your point’s well-made.
Most agents see good writers as a threat lol
I'm not sure they do. I suspect they don't think about us much at all, or even know we exist.
That does not many any sense. You must elaborate. But I failed to read the entire thread when I wrote that. None of this makes any sense. Sorrry.
Robert’s comment in the thread is the one that will stay with me, that woman sitting behind her own hardcovers at a book fair, agented and traditionally published and completely alone with the marketing. My own fantasy novel outsold the traditional release after the publisher who picked it up folded within the year. Nobody warns you that the deal itself was never the finish line.
It's similar to elected office. A lot of people think being a congressperson would be glamorous, but a monstrous amount of time is spent raising money for the next campaign. People often think legislators don't work all that much, but the fundraising part of the job _is_ the full-time job these days.
And yeah, book touring seems glamorous from a distance, but the "book tours" most authors do are self-funded or on a shoestring budget. The era in which a publisher would spring for business class and a 14-city tour is long over, if it ever existed.
I was a ghostwriter for Random House for a couple of years. I had access to people but what struck me was they only wanted certain kinds of books for women. These books had to mirror other really badly written chicklit because that's what would sell. Publishing is, amongst other things, lazy. 20 years on and I am writing the novel that Charlotte/Annabel/Imogen (they all have the same names) was brilliant but 'women don't like really funny books.' I am currently reading a book that was said to be very funny by the people on the front cover and sold a lot. It is dross, mannered writing. Publishers don't know what they're doing.
I found myself nodding along, thinking things like “of course”, “bloody hell”, “it’s even worse than I thought” and “twas ever thus”. I never know whether to shrug and give up or dig in against all the odds. At the age of 58, having managed to get one novel and a few graphic novels traditionally published, self publishing again feels like the only way to preserve my sanity. Whoever published my stuff, I’m the one who has to do the legwork to promote and do as many book festivals and talks as I can. It’s so blatantly still a class ceiling that we are facing, and the only hope to smash it is with money, and even then it might not make any difference.
I can offer a solution from the world I know: peer-reviewed publications in STEM. Every submission is guaranteed a review by peers - i.e. profs & engineers with proper accolades in the field, who are published authors themselves. You submit a paper and 3-4 months later you get detailed reviews from 3-5 experts, with a recommendation from the editor. All free, by the way. The only catch is that once you become a peer, you're on the hook for this responsibility - I regularly review manuscripts, which takes away from my time without any monetary compensation, and my only reward is knowing that when I submit my own paper, it will be likewise honestly reviewed for free.
I don't know if this approach could work in humanities, I only know that it works in STEM.
To be fair, as someone who also works in STEM, I know a lot of people who complain about unreasonable peer reviews where they feel that effort was not put into reading, and that it was made the submitter's fault. ("Reviewer 2.") But I agree that it's a far better system. Academic peer review is designed to be fair and reasonably anonymous. The flaws exist mostly because, while people work in good faith, they seldom understand each other's contributions. Plus, academics are always extremely time-poor due to the fact that they're doing five different jobs these days.
The main issue in academia is that the career requires fast results, while science requires carefulness. Journals taking months or years to decide is what should happen. The problem is that a tenure case (and a grant book these days) has to be built quickly. The speed needed by humans who have to eat is not the speed that results in good science, and everyone knows it, but no one will fix it, since it requires fixing the academic job market—written off as impossible.
Publishing is fairly naked about it, if you know where to look, but still tells readers that it's a meritocratic system. It's not even a deeply-flawed but probably eventually consistent meritocracy like peer review; it's a social status market, through and through. And yet readers still honestly believe they're being sold the best books that are out there—when in reality they're getting above-average books (sometimes not even that) from people who know people.
Your logic is right. I discussed this from a similar view - https://substack.com/home/post/p-204542448 where the process is nothing more than chance and the true costs is hidden, even from the participants.
I'd love to see self reported stats on what authors spend on submissions and conferences and the rest vs. their success rate. Because I think the 80% rule could be taken another way: there's a small subset of people who are paying to be read and thus basically the only people who are getting read, and then there are a large majority of people who gamble with free querying and get virtually no success. Maybe one could even start to measure the monetary return of trying to pay to play with a dataset like that.
The problem is something you've already said: self-reported. No one who spends $50,000 querying and still can't get published is going to admit it. You can also safely assume that the people who claim querying works and that it worked cheaply are doing that because their agents and editors are watching and they believe it will be good for their careers. They don't believe it, but they see value in saying it.
I'll tell you upfront that the EV of querying is negative. Most published authors don't get the kinds of advances that offset what getting an agent to read costs. There are rich people for whom it is worth five or six figures to be able to say they are published authors. I am not in that camp.
This killed me: "or get $5,000 “book deals” with no promotion and, following atrocious sales results, a need to change one’s name and probably facial bone structure." I hope Clavicular gets his new agent after the nose job.
The query system, an analogy.
You’re in a public place, make it a café or bar, and you spot a group in conversation. You think you might like to insert yourself in that conversation.
The group’s members strike you as people you’d want to meet and maybe get to know, perhaps coming away with some sort of relationship for your efforts. One of them even wears a T-shirt bearing the information: “I ♡ elegiac, bleakly comic and somewhat absurdist yet nevertheless realistic fiction (novel-length only)”. Your kind of people.
You step into their circle. You introduce yourself. You tell them you think you know what they’re all about and after they’ve heard what you’re all about, they’ll like you.
Security is summoned.
Distinguishing a literary query from the above scenario is that, unless you’ve foolishly provided the queried with a physical address, no locatable person can be connected to the shame.
Correct. They’ve already decided to publish their friends, and the query system is just there to tire you out until you get the hint.
Many agents and editors spend much of their time seeking out indie published authors who have sold well and have big social media platforms (think the Romantasy craze). They then offer them six figure deals to publish backlist in special fancy editions, and write a new series. I’ve seen this dozens of times in the last year alone, while most of their existing authors scramble for support.
If you can convince them that you’re exquisite at social media, they’ll give you lots of help you don’t need, in the hope of learning by osmosis the skills you have developed. It has nothing to do with the writing, and everything to do with platform rizz.
Yep. Meanwhile, mid-list authors burn themselves out trying to keep up with ever-changing algorithms on social media in the hopes their publishers will support them.
The really ugly thing is that most traditionally published authors have to quit their day jobs to fulfill the marketing burden that publishers have put on them. Or they get fired, because they're up to 2:30 every night doing work they really shouldn't have to be doing that has nothing to do with writing. And the median TP'd author makes poverty wages.
It's worse than casino gambling. Vegas takes your money, but it doesn't really cause you to lose your career.
A number of mid-list authors I know made pretty decent money back in the day. But what I see now are trad authors opening coaching businesses, doing freelance editing, or teaching writing classes--or now looking at their careers as basically hobbies in retirement. I actually had a pretty decent career for about a minute, back when. Now, my philosophy re: trad publishing is: expect absolutely nothing and you won't be disappointed.
This is why finding a good hybrid publisher is making more sense for many authors today. With a reputable hybrid, you pay to publish, you have a marketing plan agreed in advance and your book receives the same expert treatment as with a traditional press, because good hybrids are using the same editors, cover artists and interior designers as the trad publishers.
Note that I am not talking about those Vanity Presses who lowball an author, then add on extras and finally post the book to the author's own Amazon account. remember, if you are getting 100% of royalties, the "publisher" has no reason to spend any money or effort on promotion.
I'd be very careful about that route. I'm sure it can work, but there are so, so many ways to get scammed as a writer in this game.
You have to find beta readers you trust, and that's hard. Writers usually don't make good beta readers, and most beta readers aren't going to be very good, but the three or four good ones you do find will help you immensely. And then your editing will be a mix of self-editing, AI, and filtered human feedback, with a final pass that must be done by a person who is not you.
In theory, I would love it if someone solved book marketing using AI. In practice, it would probably hurt the world more than it would help me, so I do not wish for such things.
Hi Michael, I think your reply was to a different comment. As a Hybrid Publisher, we hire professional editors, copy editors and proof readers. We manage an ARC reader program for our authors to solicit early feedback. We provide writer coaching to help get a book ready, and also more traditional editing when a book is finished but needs work. We don't accept all books, but when we agree to go forward, our pricing to our author is clear up front and doesn't change
Book marketing is always a collaborative effort. We view our role as bringing the book to the attention of trade partners, while the author (with our support) is involved in reaching readers directly.
So called hybrids are just a glorified printing service. Yes, you will pay for editing and design services through them, but there’s no marketing and no distribution. You still have to do that yourself. I was one of the authors who suffered when Unbound went bust, and they were supposedly the gold standard of hybrids. You won’t see any money come your way if you use a hybrid ‘publisher’.
There are a number of "Hybrid Publishers" who are actually just self-publishing agents. They will get your book ready and then post it to your own amazon account, while promising that you will get 100% of royalties.
True hybrid publishers publish under their own imprints, market and distribute the book, pay revenue shares of up to 70% quarterly, and support author attendance at events, book launches and other promotional activities. Our company supports competition entries, relevant published reviews, special editions, KickStarter events and a variety of other author support services, most without cost to the author. We use our 30% of the revenue share to continue to support the book after publication.
The important thing to be very clear on how your publisher will publisher, through their channels or just your own Amazon site. Ask how they track and pay royalties / revenue shares. Ask about event support. Ask where they list your book beyond Amazon (should be IngramSpark, Draft2Digital, ONIX, and Library Aggregators. DO they market to book clubs (a profitable channel also used by trad publishers) Check on the license you will receive to use your cover design and cover artwork; knowing this will keep you out of trouble.
It is absolutely an unregulated market, and there are no clear definitions for hybrid publishing today, so its up to the author to shop around, check the contracts to see what is actually promised and understand if the quoted price is the final price.
Unbound was not a hybrid publisher according to the standards set by IBPA. It was a crowdfunding platform, which is not the same thing at all.
$7000 is a lot of money - and I see you use Kickstarter to help raise that, so not that different to Unbound. If you do do all that promotion activity you mentioned, that’s more than most traditionally published authors get, so hopefully your authors get their money’s worth.
Yes, publishing is expensive. This is our first trial of kickstarting although we use KickStarter, not our own platform. To be honest, I am not sure if we will do it again.
Our market is generally authors who can afford to pay to publish and who don't want to subject themselves to the long process of agents and trad publishing proposals. Please remember tha the head article of this stream was about how much it can cost to pay fees to agents to try to find a publisher for their books, and my comment was that rather than pay that much to agents, it would be better to look for a hybrid partner.
We are not a good choice for authors who are trying to earn a living writing novels. It is possible to earn a good living, but the route to profits goes through short stories and articles for obscure trade magazines, ghost writing business books, and other writing done for pay.
Do business book “authors” still hire human ghostwriters, now that large language models exist?
This isn’t to say that AI writes nearly as well as a real human author—it obviously doesn’t. But I also question whether the delta matters in the context of books that will be handed out by the shovelful, and never read, at speaking-fees events.
I would never let an AI write a word of text for my literary work, but I could probably get a passable business book out of Claude Code—I’d use an agent for consistency passes—in a few days.
That is a genuinely insightful comment and one that we are struggling with. In the fiction world, the answer is more obvious, but in the credibility book world where books are tools and handed out freely at events, the distinction may not matter as much.
I would always want to see that the author had outlined the book, wrestled with the chapters and themes and that the book had a narrative arc. If they then employ an AI like Claude to fill in the chapter text it might pass. Iny case, as a publisher, we would hand the manuscript to a human editor for review and a human copy editor for final polishing. Even Claude does not write finished copy in my experience.
REALLY GOOD POINT. AI will write biography as well as the best ghostwriters in the business, bar none. Historical NF not so much, but if the author has the facts, LLI has the palaver. Upmarket or literary fiction is totally dependent on Voice. LLI has no Voice. It's a robot, stupid!
That’s a refreshingly honest and full answer. Thank you. All best wishes for your business. It’s easy to be cynical when there are so many scammers about. I’ve had three obviously AI-written emails today alone purporting to be named editors, so you do start to see scammers everywhere.
There were lots of problems with Unbound towards the end, but it absolutely was a publisher.
‘the root issue is rich people having too much money’. The failed French Revolution and every other one I’m aware of proved otherwise. The root’s rooted deeper…