How to Evaluate a Potential Publisher (Patreon)

For a lot of authors seeking traditional publication, especially first-time novelists, getting an offer from *any* publisher is a dream come true.

But not all publishers are created equal. And not all reputable publishers are equally suited to publish any given book.

After spending more than five years working at a major independent SFF house, and publishing as an author with several different imprints across the Big Five and beyond, I've come to see the nuance in what makes different publishers a better or worse home for any given book.

If you have a literary agent already, this process should be much easier. Agents have relationships with editors and staff at publishing houses, and have their ears to the ground about what’s hot in the field, which editors are looking for what kinds of books, and so on.

But it absolutely helps to do some of your own research and have your own ideas and vision for your book. A good agent will work with you and pool your efforts so that everyone’s on the same page and you end up with the best possible home for your book.

Step One - Know Your Book

It's harder to know whether a publisher is likely to be a good fit for your work if you don't have a clear sense of your own book. It's important to know if your book is more of a Urban Fantasy with romantic elements or a Paranormal Romance. In that case, it's a pretty big difference because those are two different bookstore categories rather than two sub-genres within the same category. But it's also good to know whether your book is better described as Space Opera or Military SF.

Beyond genre, it’s also good to know where your book sits in the range of tones (comedic to dramatic, intense to breezy, heroic to gritty, etc.) and use of tropes. Is the project a solidly core genre work, most likely to appeal to readers very familiar with that sub-genre, or is it something that’s just as likely to appeal to cross-genre readers who aren’t steeped in the sub-genre? A book like The Martian was able to break out into a wide audience partially because readers didn’t have to bring a lot of knowledge of science fiction to the novel. Conversely, a book like Geekomancy comes to life best when read by someone that both knows the tropes of urban fantasy and has a general knowledge of geek culture. I wasn’t ever going to expect Geekomancy to sell to a big mainstream market like Knopf or Mariner – it was always going to be a SFF book for SFF readers.

If you don’t have a strong sense of this for your book but you do have an agent, it can be useful to ask how they see the book and how they’re going to be pitching it to editors/publishers.

Additional note on categories and classification: a book that can cross over from SFF (or Crime, or Romance, etc.) into a broader, more mainstream market is generally called “upmarket” or just “crossover”. Sometimes crossover instead means a book that straddles the line between YA and adult, because publishing is hard and terminology isn’t always consistent. 

Speaking of inconsistency: Want to get a publishing pro worked up? Bring up the confusion over Galleys vs. Advance Reader Copies vs. Advance Bound Manuscripts. *Heavy sigh*

Identifying your vision for a book and how you’re going to present it to potential publishers and then readers is the topic of at least two separate essays, but for now we’ll move on.

 

Step Two - Researching the Field

One you know your book, the next most useful first step in finding a good publishing partner is to evaluate where your book fits in the field. Look at your own bookshelf as well as recent bestsellers and deal announcements. When doing your research (and ideally, talking with your agent), keep these questions in mind:

· Who published the books that inspired you as you were writing this book? 

· Who publishes your favorite writers? 

· Who is publishing books in the sub-genre that are making waves right now?

· Which publishers are hungry for books in your sub-genre?

· Which editors just got promoted and might have more clout for their projects?

· Which publishers just hit big with a title and might be looking to build that part of their list?

The more of these you have answers for, the better you may be able to target your submissions to the right editors at the right imprints.

Step Three - Once You Have an Offer

It’s important to remember that you don’t have to take an offer of publication just because it’s the only one you’re offered.

You can always say “thanks but no thanks” and self-publish a book, or put it on the shelf for the short or long term. There are some cases where publishing a book poorly is worse than not publishing it at all. Selling a book to a publisher is far from the end of an author’s obligations in that transaction. Several rounds of editing, consulting on the promotional strategy, promoting the book, attending events, and so on. 

I bang this drum a lot, but this is one of those places where it’s really important to keep your career goals in mind. How would this offer help you achieve your goals? Is this the kind of work you want to be putting in for your career right now vs. writing more books to get better deals? And so on.

When an offer comes in, especially if it’s one of several offers, but even if it’s the only offer, it’s important to interrogate that offer and what comes with it.

 

1. Do they have a vision for your book?

For me, one way to tell a good potential partner is that they’re not just excited about the novel, they’re excited to publish it and can’t help but talk about how they want to do it – what cover approach they want to take, what editorial direction they’d like to pursue to maximize the book’s appeal in the market, what titles they want to compare it to and what authors at their imprint they want to send it to for endorsements. 

Each publisher has their own processes for acquisition, so sometimes you get an offer before the publisher has a rounded vision for the book. But if they have a vision already at the stage when they’re offering, that can be a good sign. Especially if that vision lines up well with the vision you (and your agent) had for it already.

2. How much clout does the editor have at the imprint?

This can be hard to tell without existing industry connections, but not all editors have equal influence at a publishing company. If the editor offering on your book is a Senior Editor or Executive Editor, there’s a very good chance that they’re going to be able to bring to bear more of that house’s resources on your book, due to the editor’s seniority.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take an offer from someone with the Associate Editor or Editor titles. There are a bunch of different ways to have influence at a publishing house, and one of the ways that junior editors become more senior is by rallying the company behind their books and publishing a book well, especially when they can take a book expected to sell X many copies and help it sell 2X or 3X or more copies through smart packaging, innovative collaboration with publicity/marketing/sales, etc.

3. Does the publisher have titles to cross-promote your book with?

A lot of what publishers can offer is access to specific readerships. A publisher with a thirty-year history in epic fantasy has developed the skills and cache to publish an epic fantasy book with a decent expectation of success. 

If an editor offers on your Military SF book and you see that the publisher has never published a Military SF book before, that could be a yellow flag. Now it may be that they have several books that weren’t published as Military SF but appeal to those audiences, so the publisher feels ready to publish a book directly for that readership and wants yours to be it (again, this works better if they can articulate their vision).

The more troubling version of this is when a publisher wants to move into an entirely new category with your book, like a history/memoir publisher wanting to publish your adult SFF novel. In a case like that, I think it’s even more important to hear the publisher’s vision and their plans for *how* they’re going to successfully move into a new category. This isn’t terribly likely when you’re submitting via a good agent, and is more likely to happen through the many weird exceptions that come up in publishing, like a publisher scouting a project/author or something coming from a connection made at a conference, etc.

4. What kind of distribution does the publisher have?

A book distributor is a company that sells to and supplies retail and/or wholesale accounts. If a publisher “has distribution,” that means that the publisher has a relationship with the major retail and wholesale accounts and sells notable numbers of their books to those accounts on a regular basis. Some publishers handle their own distribution (mostly Big Five imprints and larger indies) and many are distributed by third parties (Baker & Taylor and Ingram both have distribution services, and some of the Big Five have distributed client programs). If an English-language publisher doesn’t have national distribution in the USA and Canada, they’re really not in a great position to sell your book. (USA/CAN is still seen as the most important English-language market). A publisher without wide distribution for print is not going to be in a great position to sell many physical copies of your book. 

Since ebook stores don’t hold physical stock, distribution is different for and (IMO) doesn’t matter as much for ebooks. The big advantage of distribution for ebook is access to promotional placement with Kindle, Apple, B&N, etc. The downside is that your ebook royalty % may end up being smaller because the publisher pays on Net receipts and has to pay their commission to the distributor (so you’re getting 25% of 60% instead of 25% of 70% -- the 70% being the publisher’s cut of each sale when selling via a retailer like Kindle under agency terms).

5. Do they have a track record reaching the ideal readership for your book?

When I was at Angry Robot, we published a book by an black celebrity from the TV/Film world. We tried and largely failed to pitch this book to black entertainment media like BET/Essence. No one at Robot had those relationships already established, so we weren’t able to capitalize on having an author that would be more likely to be covered by those outlets. This is one of the many reasons that publishing companies need to decolonize their staff and work to recruit, empower, and promote people from marginalized backgrounds. If you don’t have the relationships with media outlets focusing on marginalized communities, you won’t be as able to champion and support books by writers from those backgrounds. It’s also important to put time into forging relationships before you need them, and to figure out how a publisher can meet media outlets where they are rather than trying to dictate terms or assume that every outlet will automatically want to cover every book.

More generally, this question is about how well the publisher can serve your interests with the book. A good publisher should serve as a force multiplier, helping you reach a larger audience. If the publisher doesn’t have a relationship with or very good plan to reach the target audience for your book, they might not be the best partner.

Conclusion

I want to give a big caveat here before the end:

All the research in the world cannot accurately predict what will happen once your book is sold and published.

Surprises happen all the time in publishing – heartbreaking flops that leave a big advance nowhere near earned out or breakout hits that no one saw coming. These things happen, and there’s no way to be totally prepared. 

Editors change jobs, leaving books “orphaned” and likely without an in-house champion. Publishers change directions or get bought out or get screwed over by some big contract blow-up between a publisher and a retailer. And on the other end, a micro-trend can become a macro-trend, a book can gain steam over time through organic word-of-mouth, or a similar book could blow up and help your book through increased interest in the sub-genre.

It can be really useful to push a bit for information about not just why a publisher wants to buy your book, but how they intend to publish it and prove themselves a good business partner. And the ability to judge between different offers can be instrumental, whether you’ve found yourself in an auction situation (where multiple publishers are offering on your book) or when you’re deciding if it’d be better to just take a book off the market.

Knowledge is power, knowing is half the battle, and all that good stuff.

For authors that have been in auction situations or deciding between taking a traditional deal and going self-pub, what were some of the factors that went into your decision?