The Search

Hybrid Publishers

How do you find good, reputable publishers? Forget the traditional ones if you are a nobody like me and not an actor, or a TV personality, or some sort of a political figure. I started looking at hybrid publishers, and there are a lot of them! Who’s reputable and who is not?

I decided to look to Forbes for the best ones because it’s generally a reputable source for information. I printed out a list, and then I looked at each one of them to see what type of genre they were generally publishing. I needed to find the ones that published children’s books.

I whittled my list down to three, and I did that based on the type of book that they published and reviews by authors who had chosen to go with them. After I decided on whom to submit to, I had to figure out the format of the manuscript itself. That was the easy part. There are plenty of suggestions online to follow.

All of mine were submitted online, and they give you simple instructions to do so. I submitted and then waited patiently for their responses. I had no idea how long it would take, as they said it could take weeks.

The first one that contacted me had a number of hoops you had to jump through before they decided to publish your book. A person reviews your manuscript and then it is sent to their peers for reviews, and they decide either to reject it or send it on to the editor for rejection or approval. The feedback I received was quite positive until my book reached a reviewer down the road that decided my type of children’s book did not fit their genre of early children’s books. Oh, well, it was a disappointment, but I felt encouraged that it had gone as far as it did.

The second one that contacted me loved my book and set up a conference call with me. Immediately after the conference call, I received an e-mail with a proposal! I was about to learn all about hybrid publishing. They would do everything for me from editing to publishing, but I had to commit to a few thousand dollars up front. That’s what they are all about. Anyway, the more I read the contract, the less I liked it. They would commit to a first run of 1500 books, and if they sold, they would, of course, print more. They were going to price my book at $14.95, and my royalty was fairly decent, but if they sold to other vendors, they may pay only 40 or 50% of the cost of the book. Then, if my book didn’t sell, I would have to pay for storage and then shipping cost if I didn’t want to pay for storage. Really? I figured I would have to sell way more than 1500 books without having a negative return. Anyway, my contact there understood where I was coming from, and she suggested that I look at self-publishing.

I did get a positive response from the third publishing company as well, but I was already done with thinking that I wanted to go that route, so I struck out on my own, blindly.