Hybridization

What's the Deal With Hybrid Publishers?

First, and unrelated, Microsoft has changed their default font from Calibri to Aptos. This presents a problem for me because I use Google Docs to write and Aptos is not in the Google Font Foundry so I cannot keep up with the times. My work applications—like at my job job all changed to Aptos. My non-work-related writing and activities are all Google based and have remained Calibri.

A big part of the reason I use Calibri is because it’s the same font I’m used to seeing at my job job, so when I use Calibri my work brain gets involved and keeps me on task. I am not prepared for Calibri to become a non-work-related fun font. I need it to work harder than that. If I didn’t want to take this writing seriously I could just use Papyrus. I do not need another hecking around font, I already have Lobster. I need a finding out font.

So anyway today’s Shelf Life is written in Chivo instead of the usual Calibri. Chivo is a neo-grotesque sans serif similar to Aptos and hopefully will make Shelf Life feel like work, as it should. Please let me know if you are able to hear the difference when you read. I can definitely hear a difference in my head as I write. It sounds like “per my last email.”

A little additional information. I want to Omnibus-Type’s website. They are the makers of Chivo and I wanted to read up on it a little bit. I did not end up doing that because I saw them use the following tester sentence and I got distracted:

Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil queen.

So long quick brown fox. This is the new sample sentence. No, I will not be taking any questions.

So anyway. Writing and publishing forums are the gift that keeps on giving (to me) because whenever I don’t have a topic handy I can just open any writing or publishing forum and immediately see what people wish they knew more about. Shelf Life is like 50 percent sharing my accumulated writing/editing/publishing knowledge with readers and 50 percent just my opinion, man. Having worked for and with all kinds of publishers, including some vanity and hybrid imprints, today’s Shelf Life is going to be a mix of knowledge and opinion.

We all know about traditional publishing (trad): This is when a traditional publisher—whether one of the big 5 like PenguinRandomHouse or a littler guy like Melville House—signs you, the author, to a contract and pays you money in exchange for the right to publish your book. All good there. A++.

We all also know about self-publishing (self): This is when an author publishes their own book independently, without the assistance of a publishing company, under their own name as publisher or under an imprint they have created for this purpose. A self-publishing author may pay for and utilize professional publishing services like editing, proofreading, design, or distribution, but the author remains the publisher. A++ here, too; all aboveboard.

Then there is vanity publishing (also called subsidy publishing): In this model, the author pays a publishing company to publish their book. The money flows backward compared with the trad model. Instead of money going to the author for the right to publish the book, the author instead pays money to the publishing company to publish the book. This is widely regarded as predatory although I’ve seen some uses of the vanity press that I would not characterize as predation.

For instance, I used to work at a publisher that had a vanity imprint. Most of what came through was, indeed, the usual order of business for a vanity press—authors were under contract to purchase a certain number of copies of their book to subsidize the publication cost. This is because the publisher had no intention of selling these books to the public. The customer was not the book-buying public, but the author. One of the non-predatory cases I recall was a gentleman in a niche field (scholarly study of the Talmud I believe) and he had a grant from a speciality bookstore to pay for the publication of his scholarly work. He had no interest in self publishing. The specialty bookstore bought the contracted copies the press required for sale in their bookstore and the author kept on writing his scholarly work.

That’s not most of the people who publish at a vanity press, however. Most people who publish with a vanity press are getting taken for a ride—whether by the publisher or by their own imagination. What I mean is, some vanity presses are up front (I like to think the one I worked with was) and let authors know the score: You pay us to publish your book under our imprint but once the book publishes you’re on your own.

Many vanity presses are not up front with authors. As the name of this type of press implies, this model relies on the author’s “vanity”: Their desire to be published “by a publisher” (instead of self-publishing) and their belief that, once published, the book will sell quickly based on its merits and earn back the money spent to publish it. 

Listen, this doesn’t happen. Self-publishing is a better option than vanity publishing about 99.9 percent of the time, in my experience.

But then there is the hybrid press. The hybrid press distinguishes itself from its unfavored stepsibling the vanity press by saying:

• I won’t publish just anything; I only sign books I think I can sell.

• I sell books, by the way. Like to consumers, not just back to the author.

• I have top-notch production on board so your finished book is completely professional.

• I have marketing staff to help your book sell—after all, I sell books!

• But you do have to pay me for all this, though.

You can’t rely on the lip service the hybrid press gives itself. What are the real differences between a hybrid press and a vanity press?

The first is selectivity. The hybrid press makes much of signing fewer books than the vanity press (the latter takes all comers). The hybrid press has acquisitions editors—or at least one person in the presumptive role of the acquisitions editor—to decide which books to publish. This is because the hybrid press purports to make a real effort to sell your book.

In the trad model, the publisher makes their money from sales of the book. That is why when you go to a website like

• PenguinRandomHouse

• Melville House Publishing

• Hachette Book Group

• Graywolf Press

or literally any other traditional publisher, the site wants to show you books for sale. Remind yourself of the tagline from the classic 1997 movie Jackie Brown: Follow the money. Where does the business get its money? Who is their customer? Their public-facing website will tell you. If you click on any of the above links you will find yourself being sold books. These companies make their money from selling books.

Now what if you go to a vanity press’s website? Let’s try a few:

• Austin Macauley Publishers

• iUniverse

• Eliva Press

When you navigate to their website, the first thing you see is not books for sale. The first thing you see is a solicitation to submit a manuscript or become a published author or publish with this company. That is because their customer is not the book buying public. They are not in the business of selling books to readers. Their customer is the author. They are in the business of selling services to you.

The hybrid press will collect a fee in exchange for publishing your book but—and this is their line of reasoning, not mine!—but, that fee just subsidizes the cost of production. The real money for you (the author) and for them (the press) will come from book sales. Their website is probably largely devoted to showcasing the books they publish. That’s why they’re choosy about what they sign, you see. Because (they will tell you and want you to believe) they have a stake in your book’s success, too.

A vanity press is easy to identify and we all know we should stay away. A hybrid press will often come right out and tell you they are a hybrid press, based on the idea that the hybrid model is not predatory. There’s two problems with choosing a hybrid press, and those problems are these:

1. Many presses that call themselves “hybrid” are actually vanity presses in disguise.

They won’t actually make any book sales. They will publish your book and take your money in exchange for fulfilling their contractual obligation, but they won’t market or sell your book.

2. Many presses that call themselves “trad” are actually hybrid presses in disguise.

These presses will conceal the fact that they want money up front from you, the author, and give the appearance of being a traditional publisher—until you receive the contract and it stipulates you must pay to publish.

It’s one thing to determine that a press is not in fact trad and is hybrid or vanity: Do they want money from you? In the trad model, money flows to the author. The author does not pay to query the press, to submit a manuscript, for editing, for page composition, for proofreading, for printing, and is not required to purchase a set number of books as part of the contract.

In vanity and hybrid publishing, any or all of the above may apply. You may be asked to:

• Pay a submission fee to have your manuscript considered by the press.

• Subsidize production costs such as copyediting, typesetting, proofreading, or cover design.

• Pay a fee for your book to appear in print (digital may be “free”).

• Purchase a quantity of books to subsidize the cost of publishing your book.

• Subsidize the cost of marketing.

• Pay for the cost of registering your copyright with the Library of Congress.

But how can you tell whether the money you put in will actually secure you the benefits that distinguish a hybrid press from a vanity press—will they actually sell your book?

The best measure is to look and see if they’re selling anyone else’s book. To do that, go to their website and choose some of the titles they publish. Note that they may show their most successful titles on the front page so dig a little deeper into the catalog. Bonus points if you can find books that are similar to yours in terms of

• Type (fiction, nonfiction, scholarly, academic, et cetera).

• Topic

• Format (paperback versus hardcover, page count and trim size if you know them)

As well as books that are recent (published within the last 1-3 years).

Now: Start looking those books up to see where they are available. First, check Amazon. It’s a real bad sign if the books are not for sale on Amazon because that’s where most consumers buy books. If the book isn’t on Amazon it’s probably only for sale on the publisher’s own site and that’s a big red flag.

Next, check the other big box online bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Books a Million. Also check Target.com and Walmart.com while you’re at it. If the book is available at Amazon but nowhere else, that’s also a serious red flag. You could make your own book available on Amazon in 15 minutes and for free. Don’t pay someone else to do that.

Okay, if the books are available at all the major online book retailers, that’s a good start. Now: What about smaller e-tailers, bricks-and-mortars, and libraries? Do a little online legwork—you don’t need to leave the comfort of your office chair to check the bricks-and-mortar bookstores. For big stores like Barnes & Noble, you can check the in-store availability of a title through the website. You can call your local bookshops on the phone or check availability on their website, if they have one.

Make sure you check your local library system, or the nearest big library system if you’re in an area with a small system. Look up the books in their catalog and see if they’re in the stacks of your local library or at least available through interlibrary loan (meaning there’s a physical copy somewhere in the system).

If physical copies are available in stores and libraries, then someone at the publisher did the work to make that happen. Bookstores don’t just order physical copies of books to stock on a whim. Someone at the publisher or their distributor has to make that sale. Libraries, as well, typically don’t stock books unless they’re in a library vendor catalog and they have reason to believe their patrons would be interested.

The critical thing with vanity and hybrid is understanding what you will receive in exchange for the money you pay them. Look, if you wrote a family genealogy and you want 100 copies to send to your large extended family and you don’t want to do it yourself—a vanity press might be just the ticket. Likewise, a hybrid press can be a good option for someone who can move units on their own and wants a company to handle the publishing administrivia in exchange for money.

But don’t delude yourself—or allow yourself to be fooled—into believing that a hybrid press is just as good as a traditional publisher except that you pay them to publish you. A hybrid press will not be able to deliver the benefits you would expect from a trad publisher. If your dream is to walk into your local bookshop, or the Hudson News in the airport, or Target, or your local library and find your book on the shelf—keep submitting to trad publishers and don’t let the hybrid presses’ big talk convince you otherwise.

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