Hybrid publishing

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A hybrid press is a publishing house which can be broadly defined by its source of revenue. The revenue source of a traditional publisher is through the sale of books (and other related materials) that they publish, while the revenue of hybrid publishers comes from both book sales and fees charged to the author for the execution of their publishing services.

Contents

Hybrid publishing is a term that has emerged since the advent of the internet, to describe a type of publishing which occupies the middle ground between traditional and self-publishing. As the term is relatively new, different interpretations are used by different companies and bodies within the publishing industry, and the exact definition is still evolving. [1] This confusion concerns many writers. In 2018, the Independent Book Publishers Association laid out nine criteria that publishers should meet to be called hybrid publishers. [2] However this code is entirely voluntary. In 2022, the Society of Authors and the Writers Guild of Great Britain produced a report highlighting its concerns and calling for review and reform. [3]

Business model

Under the traditional publishing model, the author bears no financial risk to publish and distribute their novel. The publisher is responsible for producing and distributing the book. [4] The publisher bears the cost of all component services, including editing, proofreading, production, marketing, sales, distribution, and wholesale costs. They recoup their investment from sales of the book. A traditional publisher will usually pay the author an advance, plus a share of royalties.

Under the hybrid publishing model, the publisher and author share the costs of publishing and distributing a novel. The publisher is then responsible for producing and distributing the book; however, the author pays a fee to cover the cost of some of the component services. [5] A hybrid publisher will not pay the author an advance, but will typically pay the author a higher share of royalties.

History

While the term "hybrid publishing" is new, the concept is not a new phenomenon. In its simplest definition, hybrid publishing is traditional publishing in which authors share some of the production costs of their own book projects, in exchange for higher royalties. Traditional publishers have been cutting these kinds of deals for decades. [6] As traditional publishers face higher competition with more difficulty determining which books will sell and which won't, some have turned to the hybrid model to subsidize their traditional business models. [6]

Hybrid publishing has also evolved with the introduction of print on demand (POD) services, allowing publishers to produce smaller print runs, and exercise creativity in how they produce and distribute their books. [7] Subcategories of the hybrid model continue to emerge as the industry evolves. One such subcategory is the crowdfunding model used by publishers like Unbound who, after a book is acquired, help their authors to crowdfund their books to cover costs.

Vanity publishing vs. hybrid publishing

A common criticism of hybrid publishers is that they are just vanity presses in disguise.

The essential differentiating factor between a hybrid press and a vanity press is that a true hybrid publisher undertakes editorial evaluation, setting standards in what work it accepts for publication based on quality and its merit as a sellable product, in the same way that a traditional publisher does. [8] By contrast, a vanity press will publish any book for any author, regardless of the quality of the work or its sales potential, provided the author meets the cost of publication. An author whose work is accepted by a true hybrid publisher can therefore have more confidence that the project is worth implementing.

Another factor is that vanity presses charge a fee which covers the entire cost of production, whereas true hybrid publishers share the costs (and therefore the risk) with the author. As they then have a vested interest in the success of the novel, they will typically offer more marketing support than a vanity publisher.[ citation needed ]

Self publishing vs. hybrid publishing

In self publishing, authors publish their own book, engaging professionals for specific services if needed (such as editors or cover designers). A growing number of companies offer a one-stop shop where an author can source all the services required to publish a book (sometimes called "Assisted Self-publishing"). This should not be confused with hybrid publishing.

It has been suggested that the best test for whether a company offers "Assisted Self-publishing" or "Hybrid publishing" is to apply a variant of "Yog's Law", [9] which states the following:

Therefore if a company offers services to the author without claiming any rights, and allows the author to make all decisions, they are assisting the author to self-publish. Whereas if the company takes some rights, and/or takes some control of artistic decisions, they are a hybrid publisher.

However, as the hybrid publishing market is unregulated, the companies themselves are not always transparent in what they offer. It is up to the author to do their own research. [10]

Academic hybrid publishing

Hybrid models can be applied to more specific areas of publishing such as academic publishing. Traditional academic publishing is funded by the readers of the journal that publish the work, through reader and institution subscriptions and payments—whereas in open access journals, the author usually pays. [11] For journals to attract both authors who can and cannot pay to make their work public, some adopt a hybrid model to use both payments from readers and authors to fund the publishing of scholarly works. [11] These hybrid academic publishers let authors who have been acquired choose whether to go with the reader-funded or author-funded model. [12] If reader-funded, the scholarly work is available to only readers willing to pay; if author-funded, the work is available openly for free. [12]

Examples

See also

Related Research Articles

In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work, whether that work is in written, graphic, or recorded medium. The creation of such a work is an act of authorship. Thus, a sculptor, painter, or composer, is an author of their respective sculptures, paintings, or compositions, even though in common parlance, an author is often thought of as the writer of a book, article, play, or other written work. In the case of a work for hire, the employer or commissioning party is considered the author of the work, even if they did not write or otherwise create the work, but merely instructed another individual to do so.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Publishing</span> Process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or information

Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software, and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, comic books, newspapers, and magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include digital publishing such as e-books, digital magazines, websites, social media, music, and video game publishing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Print on demand</span> Printing business process

Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints in single or small quantities. While other industries established the build-to-order business model, POD could only develop after the beginning of digital printing because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional printing technologies such as letterpress and offset printing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ghostwriter</span> Writer who writes for the credited author

A ghostwriter is a person hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are putatively credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, memoirs, magazine articles, or other written material.

A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house where the author pays to have the book published. It is not to be confused with hybrid publishing, where the publisher and author collaborate and share costs and risks, or with assisted self-publishing, where the author pays publishing services to assist with self-publishing their own book, and retains all rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Academic publishing</span> Subfield of publishing distributing academic research and scholarship

Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted on the Internet is often called "grey literature". Most scientific and scholarly journals, and many academic and scholarly books, though not all, are based on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication. Peer review quality and selectivity standards vary greatly from journal to journal, publisher to publisher, and field to field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Small press</span> Publisher with low annual sales revenue and/or few titles

A small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain level or below a certain number of titles published. The terms "indie publisher" and "independent press" and others are sometimes used interchangeably.

An author mill is a publisher that relies on producing large numbers of small-run books by different authors, as opposed to a smaller number of works published in larger numbers. The term was coined by Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware, as a parallel formation from diploma mill, an unaccredited college or university that offers degrees without regard to academic achievement, and puppy mill, a breeding operation that produces large numbers of puppies for sale with little regard for breed purity, puppy placement, health, or socialization.

Nature Portfolio is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in science and medicine.

Web fiction is written works of literature available primarily or solely on the Internet. A common type of web fiction is the web serial. The term comes from old serial stories that were once published regularly in newspapers and magazines.

Harlequin Enterprises ULC is a romance and women's fiction publisher founded in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1949. From the 1960s, it grew into the largest publisher of romance fiction in the world.

A hybrid open-access journal is a subscription journal in which some of the articles are open access. This status typically requires the payment of a publication fee to the publisher in order to publish an article open access, in addition to the continued payment of subscriptions to access all other content. Strictly speaking, the term "hybrid open-access journal" is incorrect, possibly misleading, as using the same logic such journals could also be called "hybrid subscription journals". Simply using the term "hybrid access journal" is accurate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorchester Publishing</span>

Dorchester Publishing was a publisher of mass market paperback books. Although mostly known for romance, Dorchester also published horror, thriller and Western titles.

Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using print on demand technology. It may also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, games, video content, artwork, and zines. Web fiction is also a major medium for self-publishing.

Kindle Direct Publishing is Amazon.com's e-book publishing platform launched in November 2007, concurrently with the first Amazon Kindle device. Originally called Digital Text Platform, the platform allows authors and publishers to publish their books to the Amazon Kindle Store.

Academic journal publishing reform is the advocacy for changes in the way academic journals are created and distributed in the age of the Internet and the advent of electronic publishing. Since the rise of the Internet, people have organized campaigns to change the relationships among and between academic authors, their traditional distributors and their readership. Most of the discussion has centered on taking advantage of benefits offered by the Internet's capacity for widespread distribution of reading material.

A vanity award is an award in which the recipient purchases the award and/or marketing services to give the false appearance of a legitimate honor. Pitches for Who's Who-type publications, biographies or nominations for awards or special memberships can have a catch to them in which the honoree is required to pay for recognition.

An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee which is sometimes charged to authors. Most commonly, it is involved in making an academic work available as open access (OA), in either a full OA journal or in a hybrid journal. This fee may be paid by the author, the author's institution, or their research funder. Sometimes, publication fees are also involved in traditional journals or for paywalled content. Some publishers waive the fee in cases of hardship or geographic location, but this is not a widespread practice. An article processing charge does not guarantee that the author retains copyright to the work, or that it will be made available under a Creative Commons license.

Austin Macauley Publishers Limited is a British publishing company, with offices in London, New York and Sharjah. The company was founded in 2006 and publishes fiction and non-fiction books. It publishes new and established authors. The company publishes books in English and Arabic languages.

References

  1. ↑ Warner, Brooke. "What is Hybrid Publishing? Here Are 4 Things All Writers Should Know". Writer's Digest. Retrieved 2022-12-23.
  2. ↑ "Hybrid Publishing and the Measures That Matter". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  3. ↑ "News | The Society of Authors". societyofauthors.org. Retrieved 2022-12-23.
  4. ↑ Guthrie, Richard (2011). "The Publishing Process". Publishing: Principles & Practice. pp. 15–48. doi:10.4135/9781446288504.n2. ISBN   9781847870155. S2CID   114299283.
  5. ↑ Staff, IngramSpark. "Publishing Options: Traditional, Hybrid, and Self-Publishing". www.ingramspark.com. Retrieved 2019-03-18.
  6. 1 2 "Hybrid Publishing and the Measures That Matter". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  7. ↑ "The Hybrid Alternative". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 2019-03-24.
  8. ↑ "The Indie Author's Guide to Hybrid Publishing". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
  9. ↑ "Yog's Law and Self-Publishing". 20 June 2014.
  10. ↑ Friedman, Jane (2016-12-07). "What Is a Hybrid Publisher?". Jane Friedman. Retrieved 2019-03-24.
  11. 1 2 Ohno-Machado, Lucila (2011-05-01). "A hybrid open-access model to bridge the publishing divide and reach out to a broader community". Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 18 (3): 210–211. doi:10.1136/amiajnl-2011-000254. ISSN   1527-974X. PMC   3078671 . PMID   21486879.
  12. 1 2 Besancenot, Damien; Vranceanu, Radu (January 2017). "A model of scholarly publishing with hybrid academic journals" (PDF). Theory and Decision. 82 (1): 131–150. doi:10.1007/s11238-016-9553-0. ISSN   0040-5833. S2CID   255104119.
  13. ↑ "Book Distribution by Greenleaf Book Group". Greenleaf Book Group. 2019-03-09. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
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