Hybrid Publishing
It is relatively easy to self-publish. You don’t have to spend as much money. That said, most authors don’t know how to publish, what’s involved, and what they’re missing. It’s the old adage “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Most self-published books fail because they are editorially and aesthetically below par.
On SWP, no book will suffer the feedback of being poorly published, and you benefit from traditional distribution through Simon & Schuster, which has important benefits, not the least of which is getting your book into bookstores, libraries, and other retailers. Additionally, SWP books qualify to be traditionally reviewed by the major trade review outlets: Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Foreword, and Library Journal.
Watch’s Brooke’s video about traditional distribution and its benefits:
What Is Traditional Distribution and Why Does It Set SWP Apart?
Read Brooke’s posts on Substack:
Distribution: The Most Misunderstood Topic in Book Publishing
Distribution for Dummies
Reframing Hybrid vs. Traditional Publishing
We are solidly in the middle, more expensive than some of our competitors and less expensive than others. In 2026, we raised the cost of our publishing package from $10,000 to $12,000. Part of the reason for this is that we will not compromise on quality. She Writes Press will never use AI in its editorial or design process, so where some of our competitors are cutting costs by using AI, we are utilizing the very best and most skilled designers and illustrators for our covers. No SWP cover will ever be AI-generated. Additionally, we’ve added more services to our publishing package, including Amazon A+ graphics and publishing day (Happy Pub Day!) graphics. We have increased our social media presence and we are doing more for authors where it comes to foreign rights and audiobook offers. We strive to be fair and transparent with authors, and we recognize that the cost makes our model prohibitive for some authors. We will continue to do what we can to support equity initiatives, through our STEP program and other efforts we have underway in 2026.
She Writes Press is an imprint of The Stable Book Group and has distribution through Simon & Schuster. Within the context of these relationships, we are doing a fair amount of all-list marketing. This means that we are doing Amazon ads and opting into various marketing opportunities that come our way seasonally through Simon & Schuster. We offer our authors discounted opportunities that we pass along from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Foreword to participate in their ad campaigns. We strongly recommend that our authors work with an outside publicist, and we list in our Author Handbook (which you can download here) those publicists we have worked with in the past and recommend. Our experience has shown us that books without a publicity plan tend not to go very far—and our goal for our authors is that they will earn out their expenses —icing on the cake—turn a profit. Short of a miracle or a streak of good timing and good luck, the best way to sell books is to have a solid publicity campaign in place.
One major benefit of publishing with SWP is our rigorous submissions process and our traditional distribution via Simon & Schuster, which means that the quality of our books is a non-negotiable. The S&S team has to sell our books to bookstores and into online retail accounts, and we need to be ready to stand by every book we publish. With SWP, you have a sales force that’s working to sell your book to the book trade. Your book will be available to any and all retail outlets that want to carry your book, as well as to libraries and other specialty markets.
Our award-winning cover program doesn’t hurt matters! We encourage you to check out our catalogues that are visible on this site to see the quality of our covers. We are also one of the few hybrid publishers that qualifies to submit our books to be traditionally reviewed through review channels (like Publishers Weekly and Kirkus) rather than through their self-publishing offshoots.
When you publish through IngramSpark or KDP, you are the publisher and you do all the work yourself. You hire and manage your team, and you really should have some book publishing experience in order to ensure all the pieces come together properly. (Read Brooke’s post about the definitive difference between hybrid and self-publishing.) At SWP, you’ll have a direct relationship with the publisher, Brooke Warner, and your editorial manager. Our creative team, led by Creative Director Julie Metz, makes sure your book has a commercial appeal, and that it will hold up against the competition. Every part of your book will follow book-publishing conventions, and there will not be anything that goes overlooked.
We are also different from publishing services companies (like iUniverse and Balboa and others) because we provide much more hand-holding. We are a team and a community who cares about the books we’re publishing, their quality, and their impact on readers. This is not a mill. It’s a sisterhood. SWP is not a platform for writers who can’t make it in the “real” world of publishing—it’s for writers searching for a model that actually makes sense in a radically changed publishing landscape.
We also provide free warehousing and fulfillment for our printed books, a service not offered by other companies. We encourage most of our authors to do a print run, and we’ll walk you through the ins and outs of why we encourage that over going automatically to print on demand. SWP is a hybrid publisher, and we’re also an indie publisher that’s operating like any other—working to support you to find your way through traditional sales channels and to sell the heck out of your book.
Editorial Process
Yes, ARCs are a standard part of our process and built into our production process. Having ARCs goes hand in hand with having a publicity plan. Some books will not need ARCs, but most books do. If you’re working with a publicist, we will encourage you to order ARCs. We handle the files, file upload, and printing of the ARCs, and will price out the per-unit cost for you. They’re usually around $3 to $5 per ARC.
Proofreading is a nonnegotiable step, and it’s included in our publishing package. We have our own stable of proofreaders we work with and a process that’s delineated in our Author Handbook. We do the proofreading before the book has been laid out into designed pages. As such, we urge you to review your final laid out pages very carefully, and if you choose to hire an outside proofreader or a trusted friend to do a final pass, please be advised that we will only consider changes that are actual errors, and not discretionary editorial changes. We have a thorough checklist of things to watch out for when you receive your first designed pages, but it’s never going to hurt to enlist more help and get another final set of eyes on your final product. Also, if you’re up for it, we recommend doing a final out-loud reading of your own book once it’s in ARCs. There’s no better way to catch errors than to read your work aloud.
She Writes Press mostly publish paperback (perfect-bound) books. If an author wants a hardcover (case-bound), they must consider the print costs, and we would like to have a conversation with you about the pros and cons of this option. Our standard trim sizes are 5.5 x 8.5 inches and 6 x 9 inches. We have the capacity to print mechanical and saddle-stitched books, and well as nontraditional trim sizes. We print the majority of our books with an American offset printer, but we do occasionally work with offshore printers when we have four-color books. If you have a book that’s outside of a traditional trim size or specifications, make sure to address this with us early on.
Our cover program is overseen by our creative director, Julie Metz. Early in the process of publishing with She Writes Press, authors are asked to fill out a cover memo to give us direction, and from there they are given at least three cover “comps” to review. The author will then weighs in on the direction, or even ideally choose their favorite concept. We work with our authors to create the best possible cover for their book, and we also request from our authors that this be a collaborative process. We take our covers very seriously and strive to produce covers we can all be proud of.
Printing, Distribution & Sales
Simon & Schuster currently distributes SWP books nationally, while we’re benefitting from our partnership with The Stable Book Group for international sales. Our international sales team is Global Publishers Group, LLC, for the sale of your English-language book in foreign territories. Amazon also sells across the world, and SWP will make available the U.S. edition of your book for international purchase. Where it comes to foreign rights, we are happy to allow authors to retain said rights if they have a mechanism by which to sell them (ie, an agent). If you are not agented, we recommend letting us hold your foreign/translation rights and to try to sell them on your behalf. We have a strong track record of selling translation rights to foreign publishers, and this is a way for authors to make some extra money when those sales go through.
We prepare and upload our authors’ files, sending them to the printer on their behalf and making the e-book files available.
The retailers we distribute to include:
Retail Partners
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Amazon.com
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Barnes & Noble
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Baker & Taylor (retail fulfillment & metadata to stores/libraries)
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Ingram Wholesale
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Readerlink
Ebook Retailers
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Amazon Kindle Store
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Apple Books (iBooks Store)
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Google Play Books
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Barnes & Noble (NOOK Store)
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Kobo
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Scribd
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Bookshop.org (ebooks)
Library & Institutional Channels
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OverDrive / Libby
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Public library catalog platforms
Authors own your files with the hybrid model, so at any point post-publication they can ask SWP to send them their packaged files.
The cost of printing falls to our authors, and is on top of the cost of the publishing package. We have long-standing relationships with our printers. As a result, our prices are lower, due to economies of scale, than what most authors will find if they go out and solicit a printing bid on their own. We will recommend a print run of at least 500 copies to make it worth your while and to keep the costs manageable, and we will talk through sales expectations with you to help you determine whether a short print-run makes sense for you, or whether your book should be a candidate for POD only.
SWP authors who get a print run will own their own books outright. You may order your books at any point directly from She Writes Press (SWP@stablebookgroup.com) and pay only the shipping cost for those copies. For authors who opt for POD or who flip to POD later in their publishing journey, you may purchase your books for your own use or resale (excluding trade sales) at the manufacturing cost, plus shipping and handling.
While we strongly prefer bookstores order through Simon & Schuster, some will insist on ordering through Ingram. This is okay, as bookstores can order our books through Ingram Wholesale. Still, if you are connected with a bookstore, please share this ordering information with them: shewritespress.com/ordering
S&S will fulfill bookstore orders whether you’ve opted to make your book available through a print run or through POD.
She Writes Press does not offer fulfillment services on direct sales from authors’ websites. That said, we store your books in Simon & Schuster’s warehouse. These are books you own, so S&S will fulfill your orders through us at any time, and you only pay the shipping costs. To place an order for your own books (whether for your own purposes or to fulfill a direct customer order), please reference Ordering 101 in our Author Handbook.
Our books are distributed by Simon & Schuster, and all books benefit from their internal sales process. Your book will also be listed in Simon & Schuster’s online catalog through Edelweiss. We warehouse books in Tennessee at no additional cost to the author.
Our current default list price is $17.99, and this shows you what your earnings will be at that price point.
FOR BOOKS SOLD DIRECTLY FROM YOUR WEBSITE OR AT LIVE EVENTS:
- The Net Sales Price will be the $17.99, or a little less if you discount it.
- The manufacturing cost will be $3–$4.
- If you hand-sell the books from among your own initial inventory, or ship them yourself, those are your only costs. If you need to replenish your own stock from Simon & Schuster’s warehouse, you need to take those costs into consideration.
- So, if you sell your book directly, your Net Profit will be: $13.99–15.99.
We recommend you pass along the cost of shipping and handling to your consumer. Sending via media mail throughout the U.S. is $2.58 and the cost of mailers is typically about $1-$1.50 per mailer, so you can generally charge back between $4-$5 for shipping and handling.
FOR PHYSICAL BOOKS SOLD DIRECTLY THROUGH AMAZON, B&N, OR OTHER RETAILERS (THE BOOK TRADE):
- The Net Sales Price will be $8.99 or 50% of the $17.99 (standard trade discount).
- The manufacturing cost will be about $3–$4.
- For distribution, maintaining the trade relationships, warehousing, shipping, and accounting for book sales, SWP receives a 40% fee from the Net Sales Price.
- For books sold through the trade, your Net Profit will be: $2.41-$3.41 ($8.99 minus $3-$4 [manufacturing] minus $3.58 [40% of $8.97]).
- Because author earnings vary greatly depending on the cost of printing, SWP increasingly recommends print runs that will yield a lower price point per book and we will work with the author to obtain the best price point per unit.
FOR E-BOOK SALES:
- Our frontlist is currently distributed by S&S and sold at the price set by SWP. Our typical e-book price point is $12.99.
- For managing relationships and files, distribution to the trade partners, and for handling all customer service and accounting, SWP receives a 30% fee from the Net Sales Price.
- There are two ways in which e-book earnings are calculated, depending on where the e-books are sold. You will make approximately $3-$4/book on the wholesale model (Amazon Kindle, B&N Nook, and all platforms minus Apple), and $5/book on the Agency model (Apple).
SWP takes a distribution, management, and warehousing fee of 40% of net sales on all print books sold and 30% on all e-books sold. There is also a small fee added onto e-books (7.5% of net sales for all accounts except Apple, and 5.6% of retail for Apple). See the further breakdown of this below. We provide quarterly statements to all of our authors. We also make sure that the accounts are current. We liaison with all major accounts. We believe that authors will benefit from having SWP managing their POD and e-book accounts because, as any author braving the world of self-publishing alone knows, there are a lot of small details to figure out and stay on top of. One of the most complicated is metadata. In our experience, the big self-publishing companies don’t give authors much hand-holding. We strive to function like a traditional press in this sense. Our authors can contact us with problems and we will keep their accounts running smoothly.