The Real Story Behind Hybrid Publishing with Brooke Warner

“Distribution” might be the single most misunderstood word in book publishing, and that confusion costs authors real money. We sit down with Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press and host of the Memoir Nation podcast, to explain what legitimate hybrid publishing looks like and why it emerged as a needed alternative to both traditional publishing and DIY self-publishing.

We start with Brooke’s path through traditional indie publishing and the industry shift she watched firsthand: acquisitions moving away from “we love the writing” toward “who is the author and what platform do they have?” From there, we trace how She Writes Press grew into a writing-first hybrid publisher and what “author-subsidized” actually means, including why royalties work differently when authors invest in production.

Then we get highly practical about book distribution. Brooke breaks down fulfillment versus true traditional distribution, the push effect of sales reps, how Amazon and wholesalers place orders, why bookstores and libraries matter, and the financial reality of commissions and returns. We also cover the modern landscape of hybrid publishers, including the rise of predatory publishing, and share concrete vetting steps like talking to authors you find yourself, examining book quality, and using the IBPA hybrid criteria checklist to verify claims.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Joel 0:10

Hi, everybody. You are listening to If I'm Being Honest, Straight Talk About Book Publishing and Promotion. I'm your host, Joel Pitney, and I am very, very excited to have Brooke Warner, the publisher of She Writes Press, here with us today. Welcome, Brooke. Thanks, Joel. I met Brooke, I think, for the first time at the San Francisco Writers Conference a few years ago, and have since uh overlapped with her a couple of times at different conferences. And uh she's the I've always recommended Brooke and her company, She Writes, to anybody who's interested in the hybrid publishing model. So um I'm really excited to kind of talk about all that with her today.

Brooke 0:49

Yeah, me too. I appreciate it. I'm glad to be here.

Joel 0:52

So

Brooke’s Path Through Traditional Publishing

Joel 0:53

um, Brooke, I know that you come from a traditional publishing background. So I I thought maybe it'd be cool just to hear a little bit about your publishing journey and and how you ended up uh founding She Writes Press.

Brooke 1:04

Yeah, thank you. That story uh is look, it actually starts in 2000, and that's when I started in traditional book publishing, and I worked for five years at North Atlantic Books and then nine years at SEAL Press. Uh and so both of those are Bay Area publishing houses. SEAL Press is a feminist women's press, um, which has since been acquired by Heshet. And so uh, but at the time was very indie. And so I bought I came up and out of indie publishing. And during those 13 plus years in traditional book publishing, there were just so many changes in the industry. Uh, but the biggest one and the one that impacted me the most was what I was allowed to acquire.

Joel 1:49

Okay.

Brooke 1:49

We went from like a publishing mandate of acquire what you like editorially, what's interesting, you know, what makes sense for this press, to by the time toward my later years at SEAL, much more about who is the author, what is their author platform, how mediagenic are they, and the like uh power, you know, moved from editorial to marketing. And that was a noticeable shift and one that frustrated me a lot of times. And so uh, I mean, I do tell the story of leaving SEAL Press in my TEDx talk, but the short version of that story is that I had a project that I really wanted to acquire, that I couldn't acquire, or, or if I did, it kind of had strings attached. And I did have a bit of a breaking point. And so all of this sort of culminating energy around traditional publishing that just felt no longer editorially driven was what led me to start She Writes Press. Um, and so the founding principle of She Writes Press is that it's the writing. Um that's awesome. Yeah, you don't have to have a strong author platform or a giant marketing, you know, um, sensibility that that helps, of course, to sell books and we can talk about that, but that is not what we acquire on. And so She Writes Press now is 15 this summer, I think. And um we, you know, we've been going strong for 15 years, and so clearly we are occupying a space that was needed.

Joel 3:25

Yes,

Why Author Platform Took Over

Joel 3:26

you certainly are, and you've become very popular. I you have many fans, I've I've met many of them, and they they always trumpet um the virtues of She Writes. Um before I want to dive into She Writes a little bit um in a second, but you said something I thought was interesting about this transition from uh being really writer and content driven in terms of what books are being acquired into this sort of platform thing. And what would you why do you think that that's happened? Why what what's driving that shift in the publishing industry? Because it's few people would argue that that's happened, right?

Brooke 3:57

Yeah, I mean, I think that when it first started happening and when I first started noticing it was around 2010, you know, so or even earlier than that, maybe 2000, late 2000, you know, eight, nine was the noticeable shift for me. And I think what was happening was uh the blogosphere was really huge at the time. Social media was really ramping up. So people were building these online platforms, and of course, publishers were seeing, oh, this sells books. And so there was a shift from real traditional media to author-driven guerrilla media, if you want to call it that. And I think then publishers decided, oh, well, it's the authors, of course, and the author platforms that are selling the books rather than our efforts, even though, of course, traditional efforts, you know, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. Uh, and so that caught fire. I mean, author platform really became a thing around that time too, in those early 2000s. Um, so I don't really begrudge the publishers for it. I mean, they're a profitable, you know, or driven by profits. And I and so, you know, when it comes to what you can acquire, you have to like look at your PLs and want to earn out. And, you know, passion projects are great, but they don't sustain a business. So I, you know, it's it really comes down to the money as so much of any industry does.

Joel 5:26

Certainly. Well, so okay, that that's that's awesome. And then thank you for that background. That's a very succinct and you know, simple description. Well, I very accurate though, in my experience too. Um, so so she writes.

Building She Writes As A Third Way

Joel 5:40

Tell me a little bit about SheWrites and you know, uh, and how it's structured, how you founded it, um, how you filled that niche in the market.

Brooke 5:48

Yeah, I mean, she writes in terms of its founding, you know, I was friends with the woman who founded SheWrites.com. Her name is Kamie Wykoff. At the time, it was sort of touted as like a Facebook for women writers. It was a community, sort of a substacky vibe. You know, people wrote long pieces and they shared, and it was a community at that time. Um, and I thought to myself, if I'm not going to stay in traditional publishing, it would be fun to start like a publishing entity, but I didn't think of it in big terms. You know, I mean, I really thought of it at the time as assisted self-publishing. And so I wanted to leave traditional publishing. I thought I would like coach writers and help them get published. And so I started She Writes with Kamy. Um, and like, I mean, it kind of took on a life of its own in the sense that from the get-go, I would say our first season, you probably could have called it assisted self-publishing. But because I was out coming out of traditional publishing, I didn't like a lot of the things that were happening, or, or I should say, I didn't like what was missing from traditional publishing. And so I started kind of making it more systematized and looking more like traditional publishing, but because it's an author-subsidized model, it was never going to be traditional, right? And so the more that I was like grabbing from traditional, the more I was like, well, we're not self-publishing, we're not traditional publishing, we're in between. And we started calling ourselves a third way. But it wasn't hybrid yet. That term was just not being used. And so it was really our authors who said hybrid. You know, I mean, I I remember very well like a conversation that we had with the authors, and they were like, co-publishing, hybrid. And we just started calling it hybrid. Um, and so that's really how it started. You know, I mean, it's always been a community effort since then. Hybrid has obviously exploded and been a bit better codified. Um, but you know, in the beginning, we were just trying to publish good books and get services to authors and have them, you know, have a way to publish that was I guess I want to say like more elevated um than self-publishing on the level that they had a publisher and someone supporting them and that they weren't feeling, you know, adrift.

Joel 8:24

Okay. That's cool. And so I I want to go back and you, you know, you've used a lot of really cool phrases in here. So I want to kind of unpack them. And you talked about in the beginning you were doing uh self-publishing assist, basically. Right. And that's kind of like what my company does still, right? I mean, where essentially you hire a single company to do all the things you need to publish a book. Edit, you know, do the editorial design, set up your distribution, that kind of thing. Right. And I know distribution means a lot of different things. So, but then you said you started to borrow you wanted to borrow some things from traditional publishing, which is ultimately what led it to be more hybrid. So can you talk a little bit about

What Hybrid Borrows From Traditional

Joel 9:02

that? Like what what are some of the specific things that you wanted to bring from your experience in traditional?

Brooke 9:07

I mean, it would we have to go immediately to distribution because I came out of um traditional publishing, right? And so therefore we had traditional distribution and all of the years that I was in book publishing from Publishers Group West. And so I had a, you know, 13 plus year relationship with the reps and the team at Publishers Group West. And um, what what I realized when I got to SheWrites the first season was like, what is happening here? It was it like it wasn't familiar to me, you know, because I the the mechanisms of distribution were absent. And so uh that was probably the biggest thing. And it took some time, you know, to figure out how to make that work. We had an interim partner at the time that sort of supported us with KDP and LSI, you know, which are like usually what self-published authors use, although now they use it.

Joel 10:03

But that's it, and that's lightning source from Ingram. It is LSI. Yeah.

Brooke 10:07

Right. And and then that was before Ingram Spark, right? So now self-published authors use Ingram Spark, but at the time they used LSI. Um, and so we we got traditional distribution with Ingram at the time. They were not part of Publishers Group West, it was a separate uh company at the time. Now they're owned by Ingram. Um, but it took a year and a half, almost two years, because you have to show volume and viability to get a distribution relationship. Um, but that for me was a big deal because I was trying to, you know, like push books into the marketplace. And that was the piece of book publishing that, you know, I didn't really understand until I went out on my own, in part because it's just sort of like a gear that's turning in the background. So I I knew it was there, but I didn't really understand how it worked. And so um, so that's number one, distribution. And but the second piece was distribution.

Joel 11:08

And we'll I just wanted before you go to the next one, we're gonna unpick for anybody who might be a little confused about distribution, it's the including myself. We're gonna unpack that a little deeper later.

Brooke 11:18

So yeah, okay, perfect. And we'll spend a little time on distribution. I want to say the other maybe two things that were important to me. One was having some kind of vetted submissions process, you know, that we weren't just gonna be like come to us and we'll publish anything, you know. So we wanted to operate more as a publishing entity that was curating our own projects, and that has been from the get-go, but again, based on the writing, not the marketing. Um and then also just doing certain services for our authors, like selling their sub rights and um, you know, like functioning more in a way that feels like we're we have an infrastructure that uh, you know, and and services, I'll use that term, you know, that a regular traditional publisher would offer its pup its authors.

Joel 12:04

Okay. Very cool. That's great. That's very clear. Um, and the way that you were like a publishing assist, though, which made you is that uh authors are paying you to do a lot of the services and helping at least to a significant degree cover the cost of production.

Brooke 12:19

I would, well, uh all the way. You know, I mean a hybrid publishing is um is an author subsidized model, right? So they cover all of the costs. Um and in exchange, they I mean, obviously we're doing the things that we're doing for them to get the book out into the world, but they get a much higher royalty as well. So that was a that was very important. Like what would the royalty rate be uh in order for their investment to have enough of a kickback for them to feel that that was like an entrepreneurial publishing endeavor. So that was a piece of it.

Joel 12:54

Very cool.

Brooke 12:54

Thanks.

Joel 12:57

Excellent. So um, okay, so that that's kind of the history. That's a really cool, you know, I think it it's interesting. She writes history, and your history is in many ways sort of the history of hybrid publishing, or at least it's a big, it's it's a serious current in that river.

Brooke 13:11

Um I think so. You know, like now hybrid has gone kind of mainstream, and there are lots of people who say, oh, we're we were hybrid or are hybrid since, you know, 20 years ago, but they weren't using that word. Yes, there were hybrid publishers for sure. Uh North Atlantic is one of them. They were doing hybrid deals. They do really that's how I started the model because North Atlantic had hybrid contracts. They just didn't call them that. They called it co-publishing. Um, and so this has been around forever. I'm I'm I don't try to say that I invented it, but I do like to take credit for amplifying it.

Joel 13:48

There you go. That that that's that seems fair enough, right? Um, okay.

Distribution Versus Fulfillment Explained

Joel 13:53

So let's I I think maybe because one of the biggest things, I think one of the biggest differentiators uh in the hybrid publishing space is distribution, right? And it's something you and I have talked offline about quite a bit. There are a lot of hybrid publishers out there and many publishing assist companies that promise distribution. They say distribution, distribution to hundreds of thousands of global markets and all kinds of stuff. And now there's people, there are other, and there's companies saying that they can get distribution through certain uh mainstream publishers like Simon and Schuster, which I know you all have. So I think it'd be valuable to really just kind of break down well, what does distribution really mean? Because uh people use that word in a lot of ways. And I know you use it in a very specific way.

Brooke 14:35

Well, I think the problem with the word distribution is that it is used to talk about fulfillment. And fulfillment and distribution are two very different things, but even the companies that provide fulfillment services call it distribution. I think it's a misnomer. I think it's actually intentional on their part because they want to make it sound like they're giving distribution when really all they're doing is fulfilling orders. And so that's probably the biggest and most important distinction, which is that fulfillment means someone places an order and the company fulfills the order.

Joel 15:13

And that could be that could be through print on demand or traditional means. But in either case, so if it's print on demand, that means you're using KDP or uh Ingram Spark, someone buys a copy of a book, a single copy is printed and shipped, that's all taken care of.

Brooke 15:28

Yeah, it could also be just fulfillment. Yeah, I mean, and there are fulfillment services, right? So it doesn't only, it's not limited to Ingram Spark and KDP, for instance. I mean, like if you're if if you're working with a uh, you know, assist self-publishing or with a hybrid that does not have traditional distribution, ostensibly they could be doing fulfillment as well, you know, because if somebody places an order, they're shipping the books. That's fulfillment, right? But it it doesn't have a push effect, it only has a pull effect. So the consumer orders and the books get fulfilled. That's the pull. The pull is coming from the consumer. The difference with distribution, and this I will say is is limited, in my opinion, to what we might call traditional distribution, is there's a push effect. And the push effect is that the sales reps for these companies are pushing books into the marketplace, and and the orders are being taken by retailers, and no consumers have yet purchased those books, right? They're coming into retail outlets. And so we put Simon and Schuster as our distributor. They push books to Amazon, to Barnes Noble, to the Indies. The indies are taking the orders, right? They're saying, sure, we'll buy 20 copies, we'll buy a hundred copies. But most of those retailers do not yet have consumer orders to that magnitude lined up for these books. And so therefore, the books get to the retailers. Now consumers need to buy them. So the bookstores and Amazon are fulfilling the consumer orders, right? So it there is still fulfillment involved in distribution. But I think what people really don't understand when we talk about distribution is this mechanism that is involved in a sales force actively pushing orders to their accounts, which are, you know, pre-established relationships, of course, that they have. And then we we get that service. And guess what? We get to pay them for that. They take a commission for the privilege of distributing our books into the marketplace. And then we have to take the returns, right? So if Amazon or Barnes Noble doesn't sell however many copies, they can send them back to Simon and Schuster. And then we take that as a hit on our bottom line. So that is the process of distribution, but it means that the books are getting out in a more robust way and more widely.

Joel 18:10

Right. And that's why, and then you know, hence the selectivity, right? Because in order for a traditional publisher or a hybrid publisher with traditional distribution, like she writes, and I know there's others, in order for them to uh invest in having your sales agents go out and pitch those books to booksellers, there's risk involved, right? And you're taking on that risk alongside the author, right? Because you don't want to get returns. You want to make sure that you what you're pitching actually is sellable. You want to make sure those sales data and marketing plans to back up that, just like any any book. And and if so, so as a result, you're gonna be very careful about the authors you work with.

Brooke 18:54

Yeah, I mean, we're careful to the extent that we want good books, you know, books that are not just slapped together, that you know, will be well reviewed. That said, you know, because a lot of our authors have very small author platforms, we're also very realistic about the numbers that we're printing. You know, some of our authors are printing only 750 to 1,000 books. We don't want them to be printing 3,000 or 5,000 that we are not sure that they can sell. And the thing is, we can always reprint, you know, if they do sell through their first print run. And then at some point for our authors, we do flip the book status to POD.

Joel 19:36

Print on demand. Right.

Brooke 19:37

Yes, to print on demand. So we start with an offset print run, and then many of our books, you know, by the time they are deeper backlist, meaning, you know, usually two or three years down the road, will change the status to print on demand. And then that becomes fulfillment. You know, like at that point, it's a fulfillment relationship because they are printed to order.

Joel 20:00

So

Where Books Really Sell Today

Joel 20:01

that's awesome. Thank you for that. And so one question I always think about when it comes to distribution in and the push distribution, not pull. Right. Um, or I sorry. Am I getting that right? Anyway, distribution in the way you do it, where you're actively promoting some of your authors, right? You're actively pitching those sales. Um we're talk primarily what you're selling to are bookseller, bookstores, right? I mean, where where do you where do you see the big volume when you are successful and you're able to sell your books through? Where are you selling into? What kind of markets are you selling into?

Brooke 20:37

Yeah, the biggest volume is to Amazon, of course. Um, and then also to But that's online, right?

Joel 20:44

So Amazon, if you're selling through to Amazon, it's not that much different outside of the printing than you would be with print on demand, right?

Brooke 20:51

Well, it's different because you're sending volume, right? So PTO, print on demand, means that someone clicks on Amazon and places an order, and that single book gets printed and shipped to Amazon or shipped to the customer. In our case, when Amazon places order, they never order less than a hundred copies of a new book. And so it's a hundred, sometimes 700. I mean, Amazon is a big machine, right? And so we then ship 700 copies to Amazon. And then Amazon disperses it throughout their warehouses. So it's not print to order. You know, it instead they're drawing from their existing inventory and fulfilling from their own warehouses. So that's a difference in terms of just the mechanisms. So we're selling to Amazon in big quantities, and then our second biggest uh you know uh accounts are wholesalers. And so we sell to Ingram Wholesale, we sell to American Book Company, we uh previously before they went bankrupt to Baker and Taylor, um, Reader Link, you know, so there's all of these in between. You know, warehouse entities that basically house books and then they sell to retailers. And sometimes it's bookstores. Like obviously, Ingram is probably the biggest fulfillment uh center to bookstores. Uh, so there's also bookstores can order directly from Simon and Schuster, of course. But the way that you know all retail orders books is just from whoever they have a relationship with. And a lot of times those are wholesalers. And with the library systems.

Joel 22:32

And wholesalers will sell to online vendors and brick and mortar vendors, right? Correct. Ingram is fulfilling through BarnesandNoble.com also in different places, right?

Brooke 22:41

Ingram fulfills to everything you can possibly imagine.

Joel 22:44

They're the ultimate middleman, right?

Brooke 22:46

Yeah, absolutely. They're huge.

Joel 22:48

Well, so so I mean, this is one thing I'm always curious about is, you know, where's the demand, right? Like how much, how much are you responding to demand that your author clients are generating through their own marketing muscle? And how much are you, by having relationships with these wholesalers, able to create some actual demand for the book by being able to pitch to wholesalers and retailers in a way that those authors would never have access to on their own?

Brooke 23:14

Yeah. I mean, I I do think it's a combination of both because in order for like I guess what I want to say is like you have to, the author has to do some efforts, you know, on their own publicity, driving demand for the books, um, in order for there to be a reason to push books out into the marketplace in the first place. But if you don't have the push, then the books aren't there or they're not available, right? And so it's like it's a little bit of a chicken and an egg kind of scenario that goes on. Of course, you know, the the reality of our current moment is that most people are buying their books on Amazon. And so it there's a I, you know, it's it's kind of a a hard reality for authors because they want their books to be available everywhere. And books are not available everywhere, you know, they're available somewhat selectively, but we are able to get our books into bookstores and into library systems, which of course is very gratifying. But whenever I look at like where has a given book landed, it's it's kind of a weird picture sometimes. You know, it's like two at this bookstore and five at this library system, and then you know, a hundred to Amazon. And of course, what we're trying to do is have enough energy with that book that those books don't come back. You know, like almost that's the entire goal of most publishers is to is for those books to be sold through. Um, we're not sitting there at bookstores being, you know, hand selling. And so some of that is just kind of coming from the results of it's not just the marketing and publicity, by the way. It's like the positioning of the work as well, right? Is it a great cover? Is it something that someone's gonna want to pick up and look at? You know, all of that stuff is stuff that you're thinking about because that ultimately contributes to sell-through as well.

Joel 25:10

That's

Marketing Reality And Setting Expectations

Joel 25:11

awesome. Well, yeah, I mean, I I I don't know if you know this, but I I ghostwrite, and that's most of my experience with traditional publishing comes from that because many of the titles that I'm ghostwriting were working with a traditional publisher. And I've seen this script play itself out many times where even at that level, a lot you know, we're talking about authors who are getting dis decent advances, right? From a publisher. And so they expect the publisher then has this huge vested interest to then go out and actively promote and push that book. And yet it's still the author that has to keep selling the publisher on the book to even get the publisher behind the book enough to start pushing it to retailers. So there's never this like magical formula where once you get the publishing deal, whether it's self, hybrid, traditional, that it'll just happen for you.

Brooke 25:59

Not at all. And I think what, you know, the only thing I'll say is like I think once you've sold your book to a publisher, your publisher is on board and they are invested. But what is, you know, often shocking to authors is that the publishers also just only do so much, you know, and and sometimes they're not transparent about how little they do. You know, and I think the other thing that's very shocking, because I have a friend who sold her book, you know, to a traditional publisher a couple of years ago for a major advance, you know, a a multi-digit six-figure advance. And the money that they put into marketing was negligible. And she was like, I don't get it. You know, why would you pay so much money for this book, but then put so little into the marketing? And that is a kind of common disconnect, you know. And I told her, you got a huge advance. You need to put some of that, actually, kind of a lot of it. I suggested $30,000 into a publicity campaign. And she really resisted for the hardcover. And now that the paperback is out, she is putting the $30,000 into publicity because she's realizes, like, oh, I have to be the one to drive this. And so, you know, the difference with hybrid is that we're very honest about all of that stuff. It's very, it's it's somewhat more transactional and transparent, sort of saying, look, here's what needs to happen. And we really try to educate the authors rather than, you know, sort of the traditional side of things can be a little bit of like stoking a pipe dream. And then people get very disappointed because they never really understood the expectations to begin with.

Joel 27:38

That's yeah, that's great. That's cool. I mean, not cool that that's happening, but it's it this is why I think this is why I like to have conversations like this, because as you know, there's so much misinformation, there's a lot of confusion. The word literally the word distribution is it's almost like it's designed to be can confusing and misleading. So it's good to unpack all this. And you know, I I talk to people every day who have who've never done this, and they they step in, they they're like, hey, I'm gonna publish a book, and they have no idea what any of this means. And it's complicated.

Brooke 28:08

I mean, you I mean it's surprisingly complicated. You know, I mean, I think that's the thing that is like that was the biggest aha for me was that I was in book publishing for almost 14 years and I knew nothing about distribution. I just thought this is how it works. I'm an editorial person, I'm in my little corner doing my editorial job. And then, you know, I was it's I talked about it like, you know, the proverbial touching of the elephant. Like I was just touching the trunk and there was this giant beast. And book publishing is, you know, perhaps you would argue more complicated than it needs to be. But I think authors sometimes don't understand, you know, all of those mechanisms and also how relational this business is, right? And how many different players are in it and how the more you understand it, the more you can talk to librarians, books, uh, you know, bookstore buyers, all of these people that ultimately can actually play a big role in your success.

Joel 29:04

That's awesome. Well, and that and that that that really does feel like, as I'm speaking with you, one of the big, almost invisible benefits of working like a company like She Ret, right, who has a lot of these traditional relationships, you just have so much experience and wisdom that you can bring to the design process, to the editorial process to set people up for up for success that you just don't quite get with when you don't have that level of experience.

Brooke 29:28

Yeah, I mean, I think it's baked in to some extent, right? I like I I think it's kind of a soft benefit because we do have a giant uh, you know, well of experience over here and our cover program is spectacular. You know, all of that stuff does mean something. And then also just, you know, out in the world when you're, you know, when you're trying to push your work, especially to bookstores, I would say, but some other places, you know, sometimes just having brand awareness makes a difference. You know, so there are just there are many, many moving parts and it's competitive, you know. So anything that you can do from cover design to brand awareness to, you know, just making it easy for bookstores to order books is going to make a difference between your books getting ordered or not.

Joel 30:18

That's great. Well, so I I want to I want to do one more topic with you before we wrap. Um, but before I do that, I want to remind everybody if you are enjoying this, you can like and subscribe on whatever platform that you engage with our content. We're on virtually everything. Um, one of our missions with this show is to bring honesty to the book industry. And so when you do that, um you share this with your friends, et cetera, it allows us to reach more people with conversations like we've had with Brooke and and help cut through the BS. Um so please do that if you can. Um so the last topic, Brooke, I think this is where you I think you and I have had some nice overlap on this. I think

Spotting Predatory Hybrids And Vetting Publishers

Joel 30:55

there I wrote an article on Jane Friedman's website about hybrids and all the red flags you have to look out for, which I think you made some comments on, which was really fun. Probably it was fun to have some back and forth on there. Um and so you know, this this industry that you've sort of been at the ground floor of this hybrid industry, the author-invested model. Um, there's a lot of companies out there. I mean, there I can't I can't even keep up with the number of companies that are calling themselves hybrid or vanity or or some variation. Some are outright scams. Um, and then there's others like you, you know, she rights and greenleaf, and some of these more, you know, companies that actually provide real distribution benefits and are actually traditional uh in terms of hybrid. And then you have all these ones in between that I always feel like they're like semi-scams because they like to overpromise or at least they like to they like to allow people to misunderstand what they offer on purpose. So I'm just curious your uh to hear your perspective on that and how you've seen that industry grow and yeah.

Brooke 32:01

I mean, I also wrote a piece for Jane Friedman's blog, you know, basically about predatory publishing. Um and so I will say like no reputable hybrid, you know, or anyone I think would ever call themselves vanity at this point, just because it's like it's really used as a as an accusation, you know, or as a way to sort of like cut down uh a publishing entity, you know. And so I I just want to clarify, like I think vanity is like not a term that it's an outdated term, I guess. And so it's used as an accusation. So that's the way that it's still being, you know, kind of brought up as a as a word. Um then you have like I mean, the way I see the landscape is you have reputable hybrids. You know, there are really not that many of us, and I think that's the problem, you know, is like what you're talking about, these in-between people who I think are like sincere and they really want to offer uh, you know, something to authors. Lots of times they don't know very much about publishing. They're not coming out of book publishing. Maybe they're coming from tech or they're coming from, you know, different backgrounds. Um, I think of them as like aspiring hybrids because I don't think that they're really trying to screw people, but they are overpromising, they are calling themselves hybrid in a lot of cases, and they just probably need a little bit more to get all the way there. And then you have the predatory people, which are, I think, in a class of their own. Unfortunately, I think there are also a lot of them, you know, who really are scamming writers. And they are just taking anything, they're just trying to turn it around and make money. They're not invested in the quality. They are probably lying about what they actually can do for authors. So, how I feel about it is that I honestly hate the predatory people. I mean, hate because I think that they're muddying the waters. They're confusing, you know, hybrid was never for them. You know, they're not, they're not hybrid, but it's a term that they can latch on to because hybrid is this whole vast, you know, in-between space between self-publishing and traditional publishing. And so my entire career I've been trying to work on codifying and defining this space. And now that includes identifying predatory and trying to put them in a box of their own, you know, completely outside of this sphere, because I don't think they deserve to be here. You know, and if we can articulate that and then we can say to authors, be careful, you know, because if you are talking to authors who have worked for a publishing company, they will let you know what their experience was and they will let you know if they feel that it was predatory or they got scammed. Um, and there are too many reputable good ones out there for that to happen if authors go into it with their eyes wide open and ask the right questions.

Joel 35:11

That's great. I mean, I've I have a lot of those questions that I that I tell people to ask. But I'm curious, you know, for you, when you're when someone's out there looking and honestly, you know, obviously we want to protect people against predatory, but even that middle ground you were talking about that's not quite all the way there, what are some of the questions you think someone should be asking of the publishing company they're thinking of working with to figure out if it's if it's really providing the value that it's promising?

Brooke 35:40

Yeah, well, a number of things. I mean, I think the the informational interviewing of their authors and not just accepting the names of the authors that the publisher provides, because surely, you know, if somebody asks me, can I talk to one of your authors, I'm gonna ask my most agreeable authors, right? Because it just is the person that's easiest for me to ask. I know they've had a good experience. You can DM people, get in touch with them via their websites, ask them what their experience was. Also order their books, you know, order five, six, seven copies of this publisher's books and look at them. Do you like how they look? Are they beautiful? Do they look professionally published? If you're not sure, take them down to your local bookstore and ask the bookstore person, hey, what do you think of this book? Or to your local library? Because people who work in books know what books are supposed to look like. So that's another thing. Um, and then I always talk about the IBPA, the Independent Book Publishers Association. I was on the board for six years and I worked on the hybrid criteria while I was there. And so they have a PDF file, which is a hybrid criteria checklist. And you can just go down the checklist and ask the publisher every single question. Do you do this? Do you do this? Do you do this? Do you check these boxes? The reputable one should be able to check all 13 boxes. You know, and I I unfortunately it could be the case that maybe they wouldn't be honest in the sense that like one of them is do you vet your submissions? And the other is do you have traditional distribution? Someone could say yes, and in fact, no. But, you know, unfortunately, we can't, it's I sort of feel like it's the same as AI, you know, like using AI, nope. But maybe they are. And so we can't deal with the fact that people aren't always going to be a hundred percent honest, but you know, the work also speaks for itself.

Joel 37:30

Yeah, yeah. And IBPA also, I mean, you can uh companies can be IBPA members and have the IBPA logo on their website, and and you can check all that. So there's a there's also isn't the the Alliance for Independent Writers, isn't that they actually have a review process that they will vet companies in order to certify that they meet their criteria.

Brooke 37:51

Gotcha. I'm not is are you talking about Ally ALI?

Joel 37:54

Yes, that's the one.

Brooke 37:55

Yeah, they're they're like self-publishing focused, I will say. So I like Ally. I mean, we have a good sort, I will say cordial relationship. Um, but they're they're they have not always embraced hybrid because they're very much pro-self-publishing.

Joel 38:12

Right.

Brooke 38:12

So which is fine. I and I, but they, you know, in their criteria historically, hybrid has often been flagged as like yellow for warning, just because I think across the board they feel skeptical. Um, and then on the IBPA, it's important to note that they don't police their members, you know, and so someone could probably be, you know, I don't know. I I don't want to say uh I I just want to I I don't want I get you, yeah. You know, membership in IBPA doesn't automatically mean that they are a reputable hybrid.

Joel 38:47

Yeah, it's not like getting an organic certification for your bananas.

Brooke 38:50

Right. Yeah. And you know, these certifications are helpful, but you know, these organizations also, if they start getting into policing their members, I feel like then they don't have a community. And so that's a challenge as well.

Joel 39:04

It makes sense. I mean to me, I always this is why I when I speak with people um who are interested in working with my company or other companies, I'm always uh it's a big decision, right? Uh who who are you gonna entrust your book to? And if you're gonna do the hybrid model, which is author-invested, or you're gonna do self-publishing assist, or you're just gonna hire your own team of freelancers to kind of produce your book, it's a big investment if you're gonna do it well. And so you've got to take your time. You you can't just be window shopping. You've gotta, you've gotta get to know them. You've got to, you've got to, and usually you can, you can you can find where there's smoke, there's fire. You're gonna figure that out. Right. If you're taking the actual time.

Brooke 39:44

Yes, exactly. Like if if you're invested enough and and also not going in with stars in your eyes, you know, I think the part of the problem is that these predatory publishers, they really do cater to people's vanity to use vanity in the right way. And they flatter people. And, you know, and so these people are like, oh my gosh, I put so much into my work. And then they start to say, oh my gosh, this is the best thing we've ever read, and we can do this and we can do that. And I always say to people, like, be skeptical because real publishing people don't do that. You know, real publishing people are like, this is a hard industry. You know, no matter how good your book is, you know, it it's it's as good as the next book, right? I mean, these are just the realities of where we are. And and I feel like we owe it to our authors that we work with to be honest about what's in front of them. And honestly, I think that's why your authors and you know, she writes authors are happy, is because of the honesty. You know, they're they're going into this endeavor with their eyes open and not being told some fiction and then being disappointed later.

Joel 40:47

Yeah. We've learned over the years, uh, because we've worked with a lot of people who have the stars in their eyes already, and they come to us, and we've gotten to the point now where we aren't just gonna even be straight about what we do. We're gonna anticipate all the ways where they're gonna where they might possibly fill in the gaps of expectations, and we will we will actively dissuade them from from believing those things. Because because like you said, we wanna we want people to be happy. We want people to and people are gonna be happy if if their expectations and the delivery are close.

Brooke 41:21

Right. Uh exactly.

Joel 41:23

Yep.

Closing And Where To Find Brooke

Joel 41:25

Well, Brooke, this has been wonderful to have you. Um I I've been wanting to speak with you on on our podcast since we started it. And uh, you know, you uh just I want to give you a major plug. She writes, Brooke, they're the best in the business in their sector of the market. So um check out she is it she rightspress.com or is it yeah, thank you. And also what is the name of your podcast? You host your own podcast, right?

Brooke 41:50

Yeah, Memoir Nation. So it is a memoir podcast, and she writes publishes a ton of memoir, but we also do a ton of fiction. A lot of people think we're more heavily weighted on the not on the memoir side, but in fact we publish more fiction than memoir. But I'm I'm a memoir enthusiast, so yeah, memoir nation.

Joel 42:08

Nice. And by the way, if you ever have a chance to go see Brooks speak, I I got to see her at the uh Central Coast Writers Association in San Luis Obispo. And she she gave a very tear-jerking um talk. So, you know, if if if she's ever going to be in your area, go check her out.

Brooke 42:23

Thanks, Joel. I really appreciate this opportunity.