Hybrid publishing

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Hybrid publishers are author-subsidized publishing houses that function like traditional publishing companies in that they adhere to industry standards of editorial and design quality, vet submissions, and have some form of active distribution to book markets. Importantly, reputable hybrid publishers contractually grant authors a higher-than-industry standard share of sales proceeds. Hybrid publishers are different from from vanity presses in that they curate their lists and bear the responsibility for producing, distributing, and ultimately selling professional-quality books. They are not traditional presses, and the transparent ones are not trying to pass as traditional presses.

Formalizing hybrid publisher criteria within the industry

In February 2018, the Independent Book Publishers Association formally defined hybrid publishing, establishing nine criteria that qualify what makes a publisher a hybrid press. These criteria are endorsed by the Authors' Guild, an organization that advocates for authors' rights. The criteria include (1) having a defined mission, (2) vetting submissions, (3) publishing under an imprint with imprint-owned ISBNs, (4) publishing to industry standards, (5) ensuring high-quality editorial, design, and production, (6) pursuing and managing a range of rights, (7) providing distribution services, (8) demonstrating respectable sales, and (9) paying authors a higher-than-industry standard royalty.

This criteria is an important development for hybrid publishers due to the increased legitimacy of the hybrid business model within traditional publishing circles, which has resulted in some business owners co-opting or misapplying the label and confusing the market.

Stigma within the industry

Hybrid publishers have been fighting an uphill battle to differentiate themselves from vanity presses due to the stigma that exists within the book publishing industry around author-subsidization business models. For some, the hybrid model is so nuanced as to be indistinguishable from vanity publishing or service providers. Since the late 1990s, when self-publishing became widely accessible to any author wanting to publish their own work, the publishing industry has been divided into relatively black-and-white terms: self-publishing on one side of the spectrum and traditional publishing on the other.

In response to the rise of self-publishing, the traditional publishing industry was quick to distance itself. Self-publishers lack of savvy and understanding about the industry, matched with hastily published works, created a deep-seated stigma that persists two decades later. The industry responded to self-publishing first by ignoring it. But as more and more self-published authors have published their work, and as the traditional barriers to entry for authors have gotten higher, the result has been a certain degree of equilibrium in that self-publishing does not carry the stigma it once did.

Still, the industry is set up to maintain the dominance of traditional publishing, and many associations, contests, and awards determine which authors get to participate based on author-subsidization alone. This extends to hybrid-published authors because hybrid publishing is always author-subsidized, though it differs from self-publishing in many key ways.

The difference between hybrid publishing and hybrid authorship

Often confused, hybrid publishing and hybrid authorship are two different things. Hybrid publishing is a publishing business model where, as defined above, an author signs with a hybrid publishing company to take on the editing, design, and production (extending to sales and distribution) in exchange for an up-front fee and higher-than-industry standard royalties.

A hybrid author is an author who has published both traditionally and non-traditionally. These are authors who may have a single or multiple traditional publishing contracts, and who have also published at least one book non-traditionally, meaning that they've self-published or published with a hybrid publisher.

History

Because hybrid publishing has lacked a formal definition prior to 2018, it's occupied a fluid space in the industry. It's been a catch-all term that's included business models ranging from assisted self-publishing to curated presses with traditional distribution. Other terms for hybrid models include co-publishing, partnership publishing, entrepreneurial publishing, boutique publishing, and custom publishing.

There is speculation within the industry that hybrid publishing models have existed within traditional publishing for decades. Brooke Warner (author of this article and publisher of two hybrid presses, She Writes Press and SparkPress), cites the co-publishing contracts she was privy to during her time in traditional publishing at a Bay Area publisher from 2000-2004 as the inspiration for founding a press with a hybrid model. Greenleaf Book Group appears to be the longest-standing hybrid publisher, adopting the hybrid publisher label when they began offering publishing services in 2006.

Since 2014, hybrid publishing has been gaining increased visibility within the publishing industry, primarily through its major trade magazine, Publishers Weekly, which has run various articles about this emerging business model, and which featured hybrid publishing in its May 23, 2016, issue.

A prominent voice on the subject of hybrid publishing is Jane Friedman, who has a popular industry blog and who runs The Hot Sheet, a publishing newsletter for authors. She wrote a seminal post defining hybrid in December 2016. Brooke Warner also attempted to define the term in her book, Green-Light Your Book, published in June 2016, excerpted in part by Writer's Digest in August 2016. The quick pace of change in the publishing industry has made both of these attempts already somewhat outdated.

Examples

Greenleaf Book Group
She Writes Press
SparkPress
Turning Stone Press
LifeTree Media Ltd.
Torchflame Books
Dudley Court
White Cloud Press
Top Reads Publishing
Hybrid Global Publishing
Beaver's Pond Press

References

This article "Hybrid publishing" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Hybrid publishing. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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