Ep. 226: What’s a Hybrid Press and What Should I Watch Out For?

In this episode, Rachael dives deeply into hybrid presses. What’s the difference between them and assisted self-publishing? Or vanity presses? How can you tell the difference, and most importantly, how can you protect yourself from being scammed? 

How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing. 

Join Rachael’s Slack channel, Onward Writers: https://join.slack.com/t/onwardwriters/shared_invite/zt-7a3gorfm-C15cTKh_47CEdWIBW~RKwg

Links: 

Hybrid Publishing criteria: https://www.ibpa-online.org/page/hybridpublisher

Jane Friedman: https://www.janefriedman.com/evaluate-small-publisher/

Transcript:

Rachael Herron: [00:00:00] Welcome to “How do you Write?” I’m your host, Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.

[00:00:16] Well, Hello writers! Welcome to episode #226 of “How do you Write?” I’m Rachael Herron. This is a mini episode and it is about Hybrid Presses. So welcome to this. This is one of those questions that I get asked over and over again by students, they’ll come to me and say, I found this, this publishing house, this small press. Do you think they’re reputable? They call themselves a hybrid press. I love to get this question because I get so angry at predatory practices within publishing. So let’s talk about what you should look out for and how you can test what you are finding out there when you are looking for presses to publish your work, when you are looking for places to submit your work to. So let’s start at the very top. We’re going to start talking about this hierarchically, which is not that easy to say.

[00:01:12] So in publishing, we have traditional publishers and what is a traditional publisher? A traditional publisher is someone who buys your book from you. You signed a contract, giving them certain rights. They then edit, copyedit it, make the cover, do the press, do the marketing as much as they can. We know that traditional publishers struggle with this as much as we do as authors, but with a traditional publisher, there’s never going to be a charge for you. They will only pay you either in advance or in royalties, hopefully both. But there’s never any charge for the author. What is a traditional publisher? A traditional publisher includes anybody in the big five, which are the big five New York traditional publishers left soon to be the big four since Penguin Random House just bought Simon and Schuster. So all of their hundreds of imprints that those four big, the big four have, they have hundreds of imprints and they publish about a hundred thousand books a year in the States total. They are the big, ones. The biggies, you cannot normally there are sometimes a couple of exceptions, but you cannot get a traditional publishing deal without an agent. You must have an agent. They do not accept un-agented manuscripts in the big four or the big five wherever we are when you’re listening to this. Also falling under the umbrella of a traditional publishers are small presses. They are still traditional publishers because you don’t pay them anything. They buy rights to your book and they pay you in advance and royalties. They are like Grey Wolf or 10 House Press or Catapult. You can Google what the best small presses are. It’s a little bit confusing cause words are always changing in and around publishing small presses also used to be known as, or small publishers also used to be known as independent publishers, independent presses.

[00:03:22] However, a lot of the time now, when we say independent publisher, we’re talking about self-publishing. So a more common term for these smaller publishers is either small publisher or small press and they are legit and they do a great job purchasing the rights and then doing the best with those rights to produce beautiful books that are then distributed and marketed in physical format into bookstores. That is what traditional publishing does. It helps your book become its best by using the best people to help you. And then it is distributed into brick and mortar stores, traditional publishing that’s the model. Then we come into some other ideas. We have self-publishing, also known as indie publishing, which is where you do it all yourself. You write the book, you hire an editor, you hire a copy editor, you hire a proofreader, you hire a cover designer. You must hire all of those things out. I mean, you don’t have to. You can do whatever you want, but it’s generally safer. You will get better reviews and better sales. If you make your book the best product it can be. Then there are these confusing places. And these, this is what I’m really talking about today. This is, these are where I get these emails from students or from listeners to the show saying, is this legit? Is this legit? Obviously a vanity press is not legit. In vanity press is anyone who says, you give us your money and we will produce your book for you. There’s- in a vanity press, there’s not even a nod toward quality or editing. There’s no nod toward marketing. It is just a scam to get your money. They are not making money from selling books. They are making money from you, the author paying them. Honestly, if you’re writing one book that you want, your three grandkids to read, perhaps a vanity press would be for you, you get the copies of your books. They can give them to you, three grandkids you’re done, but otherwise they are for no one. They are a scam. 

[00:05:34] The big question comes when we are talking about hybrid presses or hybrid publishers, the problem with this term, okay let’s back up a little bit. We use hybrid in a couple of different ways in publishing. I am a hybrid author. I’m a hybrid author because I publish my books traditionally and they also published my books, myself, self-publishing. Therefore, I am a hybrid author. When we’re talking about hybrid presses, it has nothing to do with that. It’s completely separate. So let’s align our minds to hybrid presses, which a lot of presses, a lot of publishers call themselves a hybrid publisher now because they are running away from the term vanity. However, the vast majority of hybrid presses that I have seen are just dressed up vanity, vanity publishing scams. So how can you tell which is which? So there- the hybrid press is going to either publish your book for you, they’re going to help you edit it, and they’re going to publish it for you and then distribute it or because there’s no real standard operating procedures on what a hybrid press is. Sometimes they will have you pay for a package in which you become published, basically, you’re becoming self-published, but they’re helping you with it.  

[00:06:58] So they are more of an assisted self-publishing service when it comes right down to it. But here’s something really, really to think about. If you’re paying someone to help you publish your book, they are making money on you, the author, therefore they have much less of a vested interest in making money for themselves and trickle down to you by selling your books. And that is the big problem. So there are criteria that are in place for actual hybrid publishing, which most of them don’t adhere to. But the independent book publishers’ association IBPA has a list of nine criteria detailing what it means to be a professional hybrid publisher, a hybrid publisher that you can trust. Number one, it must define a mission and vision for his publishing program and that was pretty easy to fake. Number two, it must vet submissions. Therefore, it is not publishing everything it gets because not everything it gets. Most of what it gets won’t be up to quality. Good enough to be published. They, so they must vet submissions and not just accept everybody. Number three, they must publish under its own in print and ISBN. They are the publisher on record. They will publish your book under their name. That’s really important. Number four, they must publish to industry standards, meaning no bad books. Number five, they must ensure editorial design and production quality. Again, saying no bad books. Number six, they must pursue and manage a range of publishing rights. So they’re not just looking to sell you in E-book form only at Amazon. They may have other publishing rights that they may want to talk to you about. This is so important here. Number seven, they must provide distribution services and that is not, you will be available to buy an E version on all the platforms. That’s not distribution service. That is basic. That is the lowest level. They must provide distribution services into brick and mortar stores. They must have some kind of in-house sales team with a distribution arm that says we go to these independent booksellers; we go to these chain bookstores. This is how we sell your books into stores. Number eight, they must demonstrate respectable sales. The average book published sells fewer than a hundred copies. If you’re with a hybrid press that is reputable, you need to be able to demonstrate better sales than average, and the last one, number nine, they must pay authors a higher than standard royalty.

[00:09:51] So in traditional publishing, you’re going to get paid between about 4 and 25% of net as your royalty on each book sold. Standard in a good hybrid publisher is going to be 50-60% you’re going to be making and you’re making higher because they are extracting payment from you for other things, for things like editing or things like cover design. So they must pay you a higher royalty rate. A legit hybrid press is not going to ask you to buy your own copies of your book. That is a standard vanity press method. A legit hybrid publisher wants you to make money by selling your books to other readers to real readers. Jane Friedman has a good post on this. If you Google Jane Freeman and how to evaluate a small publisher, this will come up. But I really liked the way she says this. Does the hybrid publisher have a distributor that pitches books to accounts means meaning to other to stores? You can ask directly or visit their website and pretend you are a bookseller or other retail who wants to order and stock the publisher’s books. Fantastic. Look for a page with a bookseller info or trade accounts info. If you can’t find anything, check their FAQ about page or contact page. The hybrid book publisher must be able to get your book into stores. They must have a plan for it. Otherwise they are either a vanity press or they are assisted self-publishing. What’s wrong with these assisted self-publishing services that are calling themselves hyper presses?

[00:11:33] Not much, honestly, if you are looking at someplace that calls themselves a hybrid publisher, but they’re really just helping you get your book edited, helping you get the cover design. The fact is they’re probably overcharging you. And you could do this easier and much better for much cheaper. For example, if you pay the hybrid publisher X amount of dollars for the, for the editing process, how do you know what you’re really getting? One somebody emailed me, what is this place called? New degree press. It’s a hybrid publisher. They have your manuscript edited by an MFA candidate. Someone who’s getting their master of fine arts in writing. You know what? I didn’t know how to do with my MFA is judge any book for anything. I couldn’t have done it. I barely knew what I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I didn’t know back then, that is not an editor. You want professional editing my editor who has been doing this for a long time in the field. It is why I like to recommend Reedsy to hire an editor, RachaelHerron.com/Reedsy (Reedsy.com/a/Herron) We’ll get you vetted editors and you get to choose the price point that you’re looking for. You get to talk to three or four editors, they’re all going to give you different prices because they’re all independent freelancers. You get to decide who you go with. For some people, I will say this assisted self-publishing service, where you give them $10,000 and they edit it, they give you a cover. They put your book up online. They get you to all the e-platforms and maybe they get you a print on demand print book. If you’ve got the money and they do a good job, some people are just more comfortable handing over the $10,000, the $20,000, whatever it is for them to do all the work. But before you do anything with any kind of hybrid press, whether it is a legit hybrid press or whether it is an assisted self-publishing service calling itself, a hybrid press. 

[00:13:36] What you want to do is go to Amazon.com, do the advanced search in books and put in their press name. As we know, hybrid press will publish books under their publisher name. They own the ISPN, they own their publisher name. That’s how they publish your books. You own the copyright of course, but they’re publishing it under their name. So you can search for all of the books that this press has published. You want to search for them. You want to look through them, sort them by most recent. You want to look at what their sales rank is? The lower the sales rank, the better they’re selling well, they’re selling really well. If they’re under 15,000 in books on Amazon, that’s just one way to tell. Look at their reviews. Do they only have 5 or 10 reviews? Those could easily be from people’s friends. Are they continuing to sell? Are they continuing to, did they get a bunch of reviews when the book came out, but none since then, which means no one’s reading it, red flag. What are their covers look like? Do they look professional? You can click the look inside and actually go through the interior formatting of the book too. Does that look professional? Really, really important to do if you’re thinking about any of these hyper presses is find their authors by doing that search on Amazon, using the advanced search, using the publisher name, and then contact those authors. Contact recent authors and older authors, go to the authors webpage, their contact information will be there. If they’re a professional author and have set this up correctly, you’ll just be able to email them and say, hey, what was your experience with this hybrid press? Would you do it again? Anything you would advise me against, super important. If you are considering taking a contract from one of these groups. 

[00:15:18] Another really, really, really important thing that you must do if you’re considering taking a contract from a hybrid press is, do not believe their website. You cannot believe their websites. You must do your due diligence. And for that, put the publisher’s name in quotation marks. So it doesn’t separate it. And then add the word scam, read the results you get, add that, then do it again. Add the word predatory, read the results you get, then do it again. Add the words vanity press. Read the results you get, people will complain about poor treatment from hybrid presses and they do complain. It is easy to find. So you have to do that due diligence. I got asked recently about a press that I didn’t know about New Degree Press and it turns out that this is the press that also uses MFA candidates to edit their books. But they advocate, this blew my mind. They advocate dropping the price of your book to 99 cents, what you get to do, right? Or they should actually be doing at that your publisher, and then they encourage you to Venmo a dollar to everyone you know, so that they can buy it on Amazon and then leave a verified review. That is shady as F. Honestly, that is I mean run if you hear those kind of practices, there are some hybrid presses that use the crowdfunding model and that doesn’t have to be a red flag. What they’re basically asking, instead of you paying them $10,000 or $20,000 or whatever it is, they want to publish your book.

[00:16:57] You are raising that money first and then giving it to them. That’s fine. As long as they are a legit hybrid press and they are going to give you a higher than traditional publishing royalty and they are, they have some kind of distribution and sales arm that helps your book be bought. We want these presses to be making money on the books sold, not on you, the author paying them. So you might be asking, who can you trust then? You can trust traditional publishers. Both the big five or big four and small presses because they have those just your distribution channels in place. Of course, some of the small presses are going to be better than others. I personally love Tin House. They have incredible distribution. They do incredible editing, gorgeous covers and they’re really well known. And you can put in Tin House Press into the advanced search on Amazon and look and see what kind of awards they’re submitting their authors for. You can see how they’re selling, what their reviews are like, again, it comes down to due diligence. You can trust the traditional publisher who is not asking for any money from you. They are selling books in order to give you money. That is trustworthy. In terms of deciding between a hybrid press and not doing a hybrid press, ask yourself of what you want, are you looking for full on cushy assisted self-publishing than some of these places are going to be right for you. If you have the money to throw at them, they’re going to put you up online. They may not do a great job with editing. Do you care? I mean, is that important to you? Something you have to ask yourself? The, I can honestly say that the only good hybrid press at the time that I am saying this that I have ever heard of is She Writes Press.

[00:18:51] They have a great reviews, great publishing. They understand the criteria that they are trying to adhere to by being an actual hybrid press. And She Writes does a great job. Every other one that I’ve ever been asked to investigate is a vanity press. It’s either a vanity press calling itself a hyper press or it’s assisted self-publishing calling itself hybrid press. Assisted self-publishing, again, that’s fine, but you can do a better job for cheaper yourself, hiring everything out in the way that we talk about on this show in the way that Joanna Penn talks about on the Creative Pen. You can hire those out for much cheaper. You still don’t have to do any of it. You can hire somebody to do the editing, to do the cover, to do the uploading. But you’re not giving somebody a huge chunk of money to do it. You’re giving a lot of different people. You’re hiring freelancers to do the best job because you have devoted time to researching who does the best jobs, rather than just accepting whoever happens to work at this very small hybrid press. How can you trust that their in-house editor, the only one that they have? How can you trust that they’re great? They should be able to tell you why this person is great and who they’ve edited and show you the reviews because of working with this editor, does that make sense? With the hybrid press, you have to be able to ask questions and they have to give you the right answers for you to move forward with them.

[00:20:21] Again, you cannot trust their website. You have to do your due diligence, you have to be checking them out. So when it comes to asking yourself what you want to do, do you want to go the trad route? That means that you need to go the agent route. There are some small presses which are included in traditional publishing that don’t require an agent. But honestly, most of the really good small presses, a lot of the time prefer agented queries. In the big five or the big four, you have to have an agent in the small presses. It’s a iffy. You can sometimes get away without that. But I will say that if you go with a small press and you are not agented, please hire a publishing attorney to go over your contract, has to be a publishing attorney. Not a regular attorney, has to be somebody well versed in book contracts. And that will be so worth your money to have that one-off then go through your contract because the contract you get from any traditional publisher is a boiler plate and they are expecting you to cross things out and refuse things. No, this is way too much. You’re asking for all future rights for all future formats, both those invented and not yet invented. Yeah. You’re going to strike that one out. Your attorney or your agent is going to strike that one out. And the publisher will still want to work with you. Don’t worry. They send out boiler plates expecting to have them returned and corrected and negotiated.

[00:21:47] So are you going to go track pub with an agent perhaps without an agent, if you’re at a small press or are you going to go self-publishing where you hire it all out and you hire the best job that you can afford? Or are you going to look at hybrid presses? Who will do a bunch of this stuff for you, but you will take your time doing your due diligence, making sure that they have a distribution arm that can get you into bookstores. Making sure that you’re going to make a 50 or 60% royalty, making sure that they are focused on selling books to readers, not packages to authors. There is no reason to trust a company whose mission is to make money off of authors. So I hope that this helps, I do enjoy looking these things up. So, if you ever are really stuck and you can’t tell after I’ve given you this criteria, if it’s a good hybrid publisher or a bad one, you can always email me. But now I feel like I’ve given you the tools to do this due diligence, to search out the answers, to accept it. When you’re disappointed when somebody says, Oh my God, this is the biggest scam and here’s why, it’s a bummer when this, when you’ve already reached out to this hybrid press and they’ve said, Oh my God, your book, your book looks amazing.

[00:23:07] We would love to help you publish this. We would love to do this with you. And here are the things we can offer you. It’s a bummer when somebody comes back to you and says, Oh, hello, dozy, squeaking in the door. It’s a bummer. When somebody comes back to you and says, no, this is a scam. But you are brave. You are strong. You are a writer. You do things the best way so that you can be read that is that’s the point. That’s the point. I think that being read is a bigger point even then making sales. I mean, it is for me anyway. I want to be read. I want to affect people with my words. I do not want to go with a hyper press that will leave me languishing in an Amazon back alley with my four fake reviews. That’s not what I want to do as an author. And I want to encourage you not to do it either. So in further research that you should do for yourself and I will put these into the show notes over at HowDoYouWrite.net. Reedsy.com has a great article that- Reedsy.com you know, I love them. They do great articles as well. Search their article for hybrid publishers. They have a lot of information there that is helpful. And then, like I said, search for Jane Friedman, evaluating a small publisher. Those are two great, very in depth articles that can go a little bit deeper than we are going right now but can help you not get scammed. Please don’t get scammed. We don’t want you to get scammed that just bumps everybody out and then you don’t want to write and we want you to keep writing. So, thank you for listening. Thank you for being careful and thank you for being amazing authors. And I wish you and Dozy wishes you as she tipped taps in the room behind me, a very happy writing. Bye. 

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of “How do you Write?” You can reach me on Twitter, twitter.com/RachaelHerron, or at my website, www.rachaelherron.com, you can also support me on Patreon and get essays on living your creative life for as little as a buck an essay at www.patreon.com/rachael spelled R, A, C, H, A, E, L and do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers rachaelherron.com/write/

Now, go to your desk and create your own process and get to writing my friends.