Resource
Traditional vs hybrid publishing
A clear-eyed comparison, without the marketing.
Writers are often told there are two routes — traditional publishing or self-publishing — and that hybrid sits awkwardly between them. The truth is more useful than that.
Traditional publishing
The publisher takes on the financial risk and pays the author an advance against royalties. Editorial, design, production, marketing and distribution costs are met by the publisher. The author retains certain rights and earns royalties on sales.
Traditional publishing is slow, selective and competitive. For the right book, nothing else replaces it.
Self-publishing
The author commissions and finances every part of the process — editing, design, production, marketing — and keeps all proceeds. There is no editorial gatekeeping, which is both the freedom and the risk.
Hybrid and partnership models
Between the two sit a range of partnership models — sometimes called hybrid publishing. Costs and rewards are shared in different proportions; the book still moves through editorial, production and distribution machinery that resembles a traditional publisher's.
Hybrid is not a euphemism. Done well, it offers a publishing-house standard of editorial care to books that traditional publishers cannot accommodate within their lists. Done badly, it is indistinguishable from paying for a service and being told it is a deal.
Where Prestige fits
Prestige is, first, a traditional publisher with a small, selective list. For books we love but cannot accommodate within that list, we sometimes offer partnership terms — discussed privately and only after editorial reading. We never pre-package these terms, and we publish them at the same editorial standard as everything else on our list.
Letters from the editors