Traditional, independent, or hybrid?
Three routes are usually described, and only one of them has a trade body that publishes criteria for what it means. That asymmetry is worth knowing before comparing offers, because the word hybrid is used both by publishers meeting a written standard and by companies meeting none. What follows sets out what is documented, what varies, and what an editor has no standing to advise on.
Traditional, independent, or hybrid?
Under a traditional arrangement the publisher pays the costs, takes most of the rights, and pays the author a royalty. Publishing independently means the author pays the costs, keeps the rights, and keeps the revenue after retailers and distributors take their share.
Hybrid sits between the two, and it is the term that needs care. The Independent Book Publishers Association defines a hybrid publisher as one using an author-subsidized business model for the majority of its business, and publishes criteria such a publisher must meet.1 Those criteria were first issued in 2018 and expanded to eleven points in 2022. Among other things they require a hybrid publisher to vet submissions, publish under its own imprint and ISBNs, and publish to industry standards. They also require it to pursue and manage a range of rights, provide distribution, demonstrate respectable sales, and pay a higher-than-standard royalty.1
A company that takes an author's money and meets none of those is not a hybrid publisher in the IBPA's sense, whatever it calls itself. The criteria are the checklist.
What does each one cost me, in money and in rights?
Money runs in opposite directions. A traditional publisher pays the author, an independent author pays the production costs, and a hybrid arrangement has the author paying while the publisher performs a publisher's functions in return.
Rights are the part that is harder to reverse. A traditional contract typically takes a broad grant, which is why the questions about which rights to keep matter at signature rather than later. Independent publishing keeps everything and supplies no one to exploit it.
Vetting is the third currency and it is rarely counted. A traditional publisher's acceptance is a filter that readers, reviewers, and libraries partly rely on. The IBPA criteria require a hybrid publisher to vet submissions, which is what separates a hybrid from a service that prints whatever arrives.1
How long does each take?
Traditional publishing is the slowest by a wide margin, and the delay is structural rather than incidental. Submission to an agent, submission to publishers, acquisition, editing, production, and a catalog slot each take their own time, and a book acquired today is generally scheduled for a season well ahead.
Independent publishing is as fast as the author's own production schedule, bounded by the work itself. A book still needs developmental attention, copyediting, typesetting, a proofread of the typeset pages, and a cover.
Hybrid falls between the two, and the timeline should be in the contract rather than in an email. The IBPA criteria call for a negotiable, easy-to-understand contract for each book published, and a schedule belongs in it.1 A company that will not put dates in writing has told an author something.
What do I give up by publishing it myself?
An author gives up four things, and money is not one of them. Those are the vetting signal, the publisher's distribution and sales relationships, the editorial and production staff who would otherwise make the decisions, and the review coverage that some outlets restrict by publisher.
What is gained is control and the whole of the net revenue. Every decision that a house would make becomes the author's: cover, price, format, timing, and whether the book is corrected later.
The workload transfer is the part authors underestimate. Publishing independently means acquiring the functions of an editorial department, a production department, and a marketing department. Each is either learned or hired, and hiring them one at a time costs more than a publisher would have spent.
Would a small press be better than a large one for this book?
It depends on what the book needs from a publisher. A small press generally offers more editorial attention, longer patience with a slow-selling title, and a list a reader might follow. A large publisher offers distribution reach, sales presence in bookstore chains, and marketing spend that a small press cannot match.
Category matters more than size in some fields. A book on a specialized subject may sell better through a press whose whole list is that subject, because the readers already watch that list.
Advance size usually follows the same line, and it is not the only measure. A larger advance from a house that will do little afterward can be worth less than a smaller one from a press that keeps the book in print.
Is a small press better than a large one for a first book?
Each position is defensible, and neither is settled by evidence we could find. The case for a small press is attention. A debut that would be one of four hundred titles at a large house may be one of twelve at a small one. Being noticed at all is most of the problem for a first book.
The case for a large house is reach and durability. A debut with real distribution reaches readers who would never encounter it otherwise, and a first book that sells creates the conditions for a second contract.
The variable nobody can predict is the editor. A committed editor at either kind of house matters more than the house, and an author choosing between offers is partly choosing a person.
Is a university press an option, and does that change the book?
It is an option for scholarly and serious nonfiction, and it changes the process before it changes the book. University presses acquire on proposal and send manuscripts for peer review, and their proposal requirements are published. The University of California Press asks for a chapter outline, an audience statement, comparable publications from the past three to five years, and five to ten suggested peer reviewers.2
Peer review is the substantive difference. A manuscript can be accepted subject to revisions that the reviewers recommend, which is a form of editorial intervention that trade publishing does not have.
The other change is register. A press asks who the book is for, and Princeton University Press notes that few books, if any, are simultaneously for general readers, scholars, and students.3 Choosing among them shapes how much is explained and how much apparatus the book carries.
Who decides the price?
The publisher, in every arrangement where a publisher exists, and the author where one does not. Price affects royalty income, retailer discount, and whether libraries and bookstores buy, which is why publishers keep the decision.
Publishing independently moves the decision to the author along with its consequences. Retail platforms set royalty bands that change the percentage paid at different price points, so the price and the royalty rate are connected rather than separate choices.
An editor has no useful view on any of this, and we do not offer one. What we can say is that the book's category, length, and format are the inputs a publisher uses, and those are decided long before the price is. Every document a client sends us is treated in confidence, whichever route the book is taking.
References
- Independent Book Publishers Association, Hybrid Publisher Criteria, first published 2018, expanded to eleven criteria in 2022. https://www.ibpa-online.org/page/hybridpublisher ↩
- University of California Press, Book Proposal Guidelines. https://ucpress.edu/resources/book-proposal-guidelines ↩
- Princeton University Press, Proposal Guidelines. https://press.princeton.edu/node/593 ↩