Why I Hybrid-Published My Book, What Hybrid Publishing Is, and How It Compares to Traditional and Self-Publishing

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Photo by Robert Adamson Photography

I’m going to assume you’re a serious writer if you’re reading this piece. Therefore, I am going to write to you seriously and in-depth about three common ways to get your book published: traditional publishing, self-publishing, and hybrid publishing.

What is hybrid publishing?

This is a question I’ve gotten numerous times since becoming a hybrid-published author. In short, hybrid publishing is, well, a hybrid between traditional and self-publishing. Hybrid publishers offer the support and services of a traditional publishing house with the creative liberty and higher royalties of self-publishing.

Sounds like a win-win, right? It is.

Let me first say that hybrid publishing may not be not for everyone. (I’ll add now that hybrid publishers are not the same as vanity presses—pay-to-play publishing profiteers with no vetting process and often poor-quality books.) If having less creative control and lower royalty payments is worth the trade-off of having wider distribution and a book advance, then traditional publishing may be your best route.

If you want to maintain full creative control, keep the rights to your book, and make more money from its sales? I highly recommend giving hybrid publishing serious consideration.

The world of book publishing is vast, varied, and rapidly changing. Others far more qualified than me have written about various ways to publish books but since people keep asking how I published mine, I decided to write this overdue blog post sharing my limited research and my own personal experience.

So, how does hybrid publishing work? Why should you consider it, especially if you’ve never heard of it before? What convinced me to hybrid-publish?

Perhaps the best way to answer why I decided to go hybrid is by comparing hybrid publishing to its two most viable competitors: traditional publishing and self-publishing. Let’s break down all three.

Traditional Publishing

This is the model you’re probably most familiar with. Traditional publishing includes the bigger publishing houses, like Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, as well as indie publishing houses, like Graywolf Press and Belt Publishing. Big or small, the author’s journey through traditional publishing goes something like this:

• Author writes a book proposal or manuscript and submits it to literary agents.* 
• Author procures a literary agent who helps fine-tune the proposal or manuscript before shopping it to different publishers.
• Author lands a publishing deal, receives an advance, and their book is out on shelves within two to three years.

*Generally speaking, book proposals are required for nonfiction while full manuscripts are requested for fiction. As a first-time author writing a memoir, I was advised to complete a full manuscript before shopping it around.

Pros of traditional publishing: 

1. Your book is professionally edited, proofread, typeset, designed, and more.

2. All distribution and discovery details are taken care of, from the ISBN number to Amazon SEO to file formatting for different distribution platforms.

3. Your book is available in brick-and-mortar stores, as well as online and in ebook formats, with the option for an audiobook usually available.

4. No upfront cost—in fact, you receive an advance. Advances vary widely from $1,000-$10,000 for most first-time authors up to six- or seven-figures for more experienced or highly-anticipated authors—think celebrities, politicians, and survivors of news-worthy events.

5. Credibility. Your publisher-vetted book can be taken more seriously by readers, press outlets, best-seller lists, and more. Authors who wish to expand their platforms by speaking at major conferences or teaching workshops may bypass more gatekeeping if they traditionally publish than if they self- or hybrid-publish.

Cons of traditional publishing:

1. You may not retain the rights to your work. Publishing houses often retain book rights and this may cost you creative control and money if, say, your book was ever turned into a film or TV series. As a memoirist, this alarmed me.

2. Little to no press or marketing. This is the number one disappointment of all published authors, writes publishing expert Jane Friedman. A traditional publisher may hype your book for a few weeks upon its release but then they’ll move on to the thousands of other books they’re printing that same year. Most publishers expect you to have a marketing plan that you will fund yourself. In fact, your marketing strategy is one of the things they’ll pay the most attention to in your book proposal.

3. You, the author, may have no say in your book’s cover. While most publishers want authors to be thrilled with their cover, they may err on the side of trusting their in-house design teams rather than catering to a vision you had in mind. Debatably, this should work in your favor. But what if you hate your own book cover? What if you’re forever haunted wondering if its design inhibited sales?

4. Lousy, and I mean lousy, royalty rates. Royalty splits in book publishing average 10%—to the author. In the acting world I’m from, I pay my team 10%—not the other way around.

Traditional book publishing deals typically give you 10% of hardcover sales and up to 15% if your hardcover sells over 10,000 copies. For paperback sales, you can expect to see 5-7.5% of the cover price. For ebooks, you get 25% of the publisher’s net receipts.

Keep in mind you have to pay your literary agent their commission, usually 15%, on both royalties and your advance. You also need to pay back your advance before you see any royalties, which is why they call it an advance. If your advance was $10,000, you won’t see royalties from your publisher until and if they reach that amount.

To be fair, your publisher did pay the upfront costs of producing your book. They also paid your advance without knowing if your book would sell and that advance is yours to keep even if not a single person buys your book. That’s the risk publishers take. But if your book does really well? The publishing house will reap the financial benefits. Not you, the author.

Now, let’s talk about self-publishing.

Self-Publishing

Does the term self-publishing conjure a sad image of your aunt’s second husband standing in his garage surrounded by piles of unpurchased books? Do you assume that a self-published book must not be that good or else a traditional publisher would have published it? Do you picture an under-pixelated stock image cover with a terrible font and inner pages of glaring white accompanied by marginless bodies of oversized text?

Oh, how the stigma of self-publishing burns. Because if you pictured any of the above scenarios, I did, too—and I’m a self-publishing advocate! 

The good news is that the stigma of self-publishing is changing. This is partly because of runaway success stories by self-published authors, including E L James of Fifty Shades of Grey and Andy Wier who saw his sci-fi novel The Martian made into a movie starring Matt Damon. Self-publishing is also booming because of technological advances in the industry.

This section may be the longest of the three publishing options because it is the most variable in terms of quality. It’s also the option I was headed toward and put a lot of research into—until I discovered hybrid publishing. But we’ll get to that.

What is self-publishing?

Self-publishing is exactly what it sounds like: a book you publish yourself. It’s easier than ever to be a self-published author. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) allows virtually anyone to publish ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks in less than five minutes. Amazon is also the biggest marketplace for all books regardless of how they’re published.

Your royalty rate if you self-publish exclusively on Amazon KDP? 70%.

Higher royalty rates combined with a lessening stigma, along with technological ease and affordability, have many first- and multi-time authors turning to self-publishing over traditional publishing.

Paths to self-publishing vary as widely as the quality of self-published works themselves. The above-mentioned Andy Wier released chapters of The Martian as separate blog posts, building a devoted fan following eager to buy his book. Lisa Genova, who self-published her novel Still Alice, was a car-peddling author who also happened to be a media-savvy hustler. Her book went on to be made into a film starring Julianne Moore. Weir and Genova employed different strategies but both are exceptionally successful self-published authors.

Let’s go through a self-publishing scenario. Rather than a poorly thrown-together PDF printable, let’s assume you want a higher-quality production. This essentially means you’re going to hire freelancers for every part of the publishing process that a traditional or hybrid publisher would handle.

What might the self-publishing journey look like?

1. Write your manuscript and self-edit as much as possible.

2. Hire a developmental editor to advise on overall cuts, additions, and flow.

3. Hire a copy editor for line-by-line editing to ensure the best possible word choices, sentence structure, syntax, and grammar.

4. Hire a literary attorney, especially if writing nonfiction or memoir, to give your manuscript a legal read. They’ll advise on any copyright infringements, such as song lyrics, book excerpts, movie quotes, etc.; potential defamation or libel issues; and any disclaimers you should add, like if your book is a work of fiction or not. You don’t want to get sued for something minor that could’ve been avoidable. 

5. Once your attorney’s notes are incorporated and your manuscript line-edited, hire a proofreader to make sure no mistake was overlooked. For example, my proofreader caught that I’d misspelled Clif Bar with two f’s and Chapstick with a lowercase c. My developmental and line editors didn’t catch those.

6. Hire a professional cover designer. Even if you own the photo you want to use or a friend offers to design your cover for you, you may want to consider hiring an expert who designs book covers exclusively, as they’ll have a pulse on the marketplace of your book’s genre.

7. Hire an interior layout designer, also called a typesetter, who will organize your .docx pages into a real book format. Novels, for example, are typically 5” x 8” with extra blank space where the book’s spine will be. Fonts and styling choices like chapter numbers and story break symbols are chosen at this point, as well as headings and how charts or illustrations will appear. It is this attention to detail that will help make your self-published book not look self-published.

   

   A visual example of why it’s worth hiring a professional layout designer.

   NOTE: Be sure your cover and interior layout designers are in communication with each other so you don’t end up with incongruent fonts and other clashing design choices.

8. Organize your metadata. A book’s metadata includes all the information distributors and retailers need, such as the price, genre, keywords, blurbs and reviews, and an author’s bio. Think of what will be on your book’s Amazon page. Better yet, go to your favorite book’s Amazon page and look at what it features: a heading above the cover copy, a hooking synopsis, a quote from a review or several, the page count, etc. All of that enticing information doesn’t write itself. 

9. Marketing. By this point, you’ll want to have a marketing plan in place, and honestly, there is so much to cover here that I’d have to write an entirely separate blog post. Just know that before you upload your book files and metadata onto Amazon KDP, you’ll want to have some sort of plan for announcing your launch, even if it’s just a well-designed post on social media.

10. Finally, at long last, it’s time to release your book! Some self-published authors use IngramSpark or another print-on-demand service to manage their inventory and order fulfillment. Other self-published authors use Amazon KDP, which offers a higher royalty rate in exchange for exclusive distribution. Simply follow the instructions of either and Bob’s your uncle. (And your book is better than his.) 

Pros of self-publishing:

1. Entire creative control. You get final say over what you keep in your book, what you omit, what your cover looks like, and when your book is released. 

2. Full ownership of your copyright. This means that if anyone wants to buy the rights to your book, you can sell them at your discretion without splitting the profits with anyone.

3. The highest royalty amount possible after your distribution platforms of choice take their cut. You could sell your book as a PDF or EPUB download from your website and keep 100% of your earnings, but to make a lot of money doing that, you’d need to be famous or have a pretty large and eager social media following.

Cons of self-publishing:

1. Did you see how much work is in the self-publishing scenario I outlined above?

2. The stigma and resulting lack of distribution, press, writing competitions, book club entries, and other opportunities that may otherwise be open to you.

3. The cost. When I tallied up how much it would be to self-publish my book with the production quality I wanted, I was looking at between $12,000 and $20,000.

Plenty of authors self-publish for far less and typically pay between $500 to $4,800. The cost of self-publishing largely depends on the word count of your manuscript—mine was over 150,000 words by the time an editor first looked at it. It was whittled down to less than 120,000 words by the time of publication, but the word count of my first-final draft before self-editing? Over 300,000 words.

Hybrid Publishing

I had always dreamed of being published by Penguin Random House. Maybe it was the cute little penguin on the cover spine or the validation that I was good enough to be published by the best. But learning the pros and cons of traditional publishing gave me hard pause. I’m an unapologetic control freak. Furthermore, the idea of getting only 10% in royalties? For a book I’d been writing for 10 years? Pass.

I decided to hell with the stigma. I was going to self-publish. Everything I read said I had the personality for it—hard-working, self-disciplined, research-minded, and patient. So I didn’t even try to pursue traditional publishing. I finished my manuscript, self-edited as much as possible, and shelled out $5,000 to a developmental editor. I was just beginning to look up literary attorneys and cover designers when I met my friend Randall Slavin for dinner.

Randall hybrid-published his celebrity photography book We All Want Something Beautiful. It was he who convinced me to look further into hybrid publishing and I am forever grateful he did. Hybrid publishing turned out to be the perfect option for me.

Who hybrid publishing is ideal for:

• Authors with little-to-no platform, as traditional publishers may turn you down.
• Authors with medium-to-large platforms, as you’ll reap more from your sales.
• Authors who have been published previously and have a fanbase, as you’ve already established credibility in the eyes of the press.
• Authors with no fanbase, as you’ll benefit from appearing on your hybrid publisher’s website and social media accounts.
• Authors whose books are timely and need a faster speed-to-market than traditional publishing would typically allow (six months versus two years).
• Authors who don’t have time to self-publish and want a one-stop-shop to handle the nitty-gritty details for them—while retaining creative control and higher royalty rates.

Who hybrid publishing may not be right for:

• Authors who can’t afford to fund their own book production.
• Authors who want a book advance.
• Authors who want the maximum royalty amount their book can earn.
• Authors who want to see their book on the shelves of Barnes & Noble—or, better yet, the coveted table amid other stand-outs in your genre.

I’m not saying you won’t see your book in brick-and-mortar stores if you hybrid-publish. My hybrid publisher has several books on Barnes & Noble’s shelves, which attests to their credibility and is partly why I chose them. But bookstores choose what books they’ll stock, not publishers. Bookstores are more likely to choose traditional publisher-vetted books than books coming from alternative publishing models.

Also, if you write a memoir as I did, you’re less likely to get into Barnes & Noble and other brick-and-mortar retailers because the memoir genre is hyper-saturated. If having your book in real-life stores is important to you, you may wish to pursue the traditional publishing route—not that they’re quick to accept memoirs, either, and for the same reason.

What might your hybrid publishing journey look like?

• You complete your book proposal or manuscript and self-edit as much as possible.
• You submit your finished proposal or manuscript to a hybrid publisher. Unlike most traditional publishers, you do not need a literary agent to submit on your behalf.
• Your work is either rejected or accepted. If accepted…
• You receive a publishing proposal. This tells you how much the hybrid publisher anticipates it will cost to produce your book and includes estimates for editing, proofreading, design, and more. Many hybrid publishers offer bundles and à la carte services. For instance, my publisher’s proposal stipulated a bundle of required services like editing and interior layout design—they take pride in maintaining a standard of continuity in all their books—and also offered à la carte add-ons, like marketing services, that I could accept or reject.
• Your book is finished by you, polished up by them, and finally distributed with the stamp of social credibility that comes with the release from a publisher. Now, with the production details handled for you including metadata input and order fulfillment, you can focus on promotion and making sales!

What are the royalty rates of hybrid publishing?

Royalty rates vary depending on the hybrid publisher you choose. Typically, you’ll receive 20-35% of the cover price for books sold through retailers—and you’ll keep 100% of the royalties for books you sell yourself, whether on your website or in person.

20-35% is nowhere near the 70% royalty you’d earn if you self-publish an ebook exclusively on Amazon KDP. If you partake in Amazon KDP’s print-on-demand paperback option as well, you’ll keep 40-60% of your book’s royalties—40% if you’re not exclusive to Amazon and 60% if you are.

Self-publishing yields the highest royalty rate with an average of 40-70%.
Traditional publishing yields the least with an average of 7.5-15%.
Hybrid publishing falls somewhere in the middle with an average of 20-35%.

What about royalty rates for audiobooks?

Audiobooks and their production are yet another blog post that I may never get around to writing. In short, you can expect a 25% royalty on audiobooks with a traditional publisher. If you self- or hybrid-publish, you keep 100% of your royalties when you sell your audiobook through your own website as an MP3 download. On Audible, you’ll get a 25-40% royalty—25% if you are non-exclusive and 40% if you are.

I don’t plan on writing a blog post about audiobooks so I’ll tell you right now that Misha Crosby of Datura Studios produced mine. I couldn’t be more thrilled with its quality. I narrated it myself and sell it exclusively on Audible at a 40% royalty rate. (Special thanks to my friend, fellow author, and voiceover production extraordinaire Seth Andrews for his audiobook advice!)

My Hybrid-Publishing Journey

If you were hoping I’d share the specifics of my own hybrid publishing journey, you’re in luck! Ultimately, my decision to hybrid-publish came down to three reasons:

1. I wanted the option of my book being in stores. Being hybrid-published makes it harder to be in stock and on shelves. Being self-published all but rules out your chances completely. My publisher disclaimed that my book was unlikely to be in stores because it’s a memoir, rather than a nonfiction book of a more saleable category like business or self-help. But they would be able to get me into airport bookstore chain Hundson Booksellers if I opted for that à la carte offering.

2. I wanted the social validation of being released through a vetted publisher. Such details are inane to me but important to others, and I didn’t want to risk being barred from opportunities I knew my story was right for simply because I self-published. The world far too often cares more about silly details like diplomas and social stamps of approval than it does about actual experience or talent. I didn’t want to get in my own way simply because I disagreed.

3. I wanted higher royalties and entire creative control and rights of ownership. Period.

Here are five specifics of my hybrid-publishing journey:

1. My Hybrid Publisher

I submitted my manuscript to two hybrid publishers: Greenleaf Book Group and a press that exclusively publishes books by women. Both honored me with acceptance letters but Greenleaf’s came with personal feedback showing they’d not only read my manuscript, or at least given it a thorough once-over; they also read every market fit detail I’d filled out in their submissions form.

The auto-reply I received from the women’s press came weeks later and offered no specific feedback or personal enthusiasm for my book. By that point, I’d already decided I didn’t want to be published by a women’s-only press. I never wanted to wonder if any praise my book received was only because I was female.

Also, the women’s press charged a $35 submission fee. Greenleaf did not.

I looked for books from both publishers at my local Barnes & Noble. An in-stock database search confirmed the women’s press did not have any books currently on shelves. Greenleaf’s were. I held them in my hands and the quality was indiscernible from that of major publishers.

My gut said this was a no-brainer. I decided to go with Greenleaf Book Group.

2. My Publishing Proposal

Admittedly, my eyeballs popped when I first saw Greenleaf’s publishing proposal. If money is no object and you want white glove service from start to finish, including marketing efforts like write-ups in press outlets, radio interviews, and podcast connections, those can be yours! Fortunately, a lot of those services are à la carte. I was able to cut the cost of my proposal nearly in half.

I’m not at liberty to share the exact number I paid for Greenleaf to hybrid-publish my book, but it was somewhere in the middle of what I anticipated spending if I had self-published.

Your publishing proposal will very much depend on how much help your hybrid publisher anticipates you need, and how many of their à la carte services you want to take advantage of. Maybe you’ve only just begun writing. Maybe you have a fully fleshed-out manuscript. Maybe your draft is finished but totally scattered and in need of story direction, flow advice, and character development.

I can’t tell you how much your book will cost to hybrid-publish. I can tell you that I was more than happy with the results of what it took to publish mine.

3. My Literary Attorney

I cannot recommend Melissa Nasson highly enough as a literary lawyer. She went through my manuscript with a fine-tooth comb looking for potential copyright violations. There were many, mainly in the form of worship song lyrics—my memoir is about growing up in and leaving Charismatic Christianity. Melissa also helped to negotiate my contract with Greenleaf. There weren’t many changes I wanted but the few there were, she and Greenleaf’s attorney handled deftly.

Melissa also suggested revisions to help protect me against potential lawsuits. As a nonfiction writer, I would use her services again in a heartbeat.

4. My Editing Process & Book Release

Greenleaf released my memoir under their River Grove Books imprint on February 2, 2021—less than ten months after I’d signed with them and, coincidentally, four days before my birthday. My book could have been released sooner but data suggested waiting until after Christmas for the golden time to release a memoir: in the doldrum thick between winter and spring, when we’re all wanting an escape.

I adored working with every single person at Greenleaf. When people ask me if I’d work with them again, my answer is an unwavering yes. They exceeded all of my expectations. The quality of my book is top-notch. The speed with which their editors revised and improved my pages astounded me. The attention to detail of their proofreaders, designers, and distribution managers made me feel confident that my story was in trusted hands. In case you’re wondering, I loved my cover, designed by Greenleaf’s Cameron Stein—he even won an award for it!

My book, Wayward: A Memoir of Spiritual Warfare & Sexual Purity, became an Amazon best-seller within its first two days of release and lingered in top-10 lists for months. I’m forever grateful to Greenleaf for helping me make that happen.

5. My Royalties

Greenleaf gives me a 35% royalty. It’s one of the higher royalty rates in the different models of hybrid publishing. Greenleaf keeps 10%, the wholesaler keeps 25%, and retailers like Amazon and Nook keep 30%.

In Closing

People often ask me if my book has earned back the investment I put into it. I have not tallied up the total of my royalties but after two and a half years of paperback, ebook, in-person, and audiobook sales, I strongly suspect the answer is yes.

My biggest earnings come from sales on my website and in-person sales when I speak at conferences, both of which allow me to keep 100% of my profits after the wholesale price. My second-biggest earnings come from audiobook sales, where I receive the Audible-exclusive royalty of 40%.

Hybrid publishing may not be for you, especially if you can’t afford the upfront costs. But hybrid publishing is a great option for authors like me who value the long-term gains of higher royalties and creative control.

If you want the widest distribution and press coverage, pursue traditional publishing.

If you want the highest royalty rate and creative control, pursue self-publishing.

If you want the perks of both traditional and self-publishing, and a higher potential for profit without the headache of doing it all on your own, hybrid publishing may be the perfect option for you.

I hope you found this helpful!

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I’m Alice Greczyn, an author, speaker, and co-host of Ideas Digest, a debate podcast. This newsletter is free because I think helpful information should be free as much as possible. Please subscribe, and if you’d like to donate to my costs (news subscriptions, image licensing, audio recording, etc.), I’d surely appreciate it. Thank you!