Best Publishing Companies – What are your options when it comes to publishing your book, and what is the best option? This article by a former literary agent and publishing house marketing executive explains.
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Finding the Best Publishing Companies
The Challenge
The main challenge with trying to find the best publishing companies is that there’s a lot of misinformation on the Internet. And that’s because there are a lot of bad publishing companies. Most of them aren’t doing anything illegal, but their marketing practices are deceptive.
These publishers don’t lie outright (they’re smarter than that), but they do mislead people. I’ve talked to countless authors who’ve gotten sucked into the bad publisher trap, including two more this week that I “saved” (their words). So I’m writing this article in case my insider knowledge might help you, too.
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The Best Publishing Companies
Forget the Old Terms
To help you understand what the best publishing companies are, I’m going to explain the four different types of book publishers and share the pros and cons of each. However, I’m not going to use some of the common terms you might already be familiar with such as: traditional book publishing companies, self-publishing companies, and vanity publishers.
That’s because the old terms for publishing companies are part of the problem. Some publishers have recently started calling themselves “traditional publishers” when they’re not. Other publishers have introduced a new and confusing term called “co-operative publishing.” And, next week, publishers will come up with yet another term designed to confuse you, and extract as much money as possible from your wallet.
So…
Instead of talking “terms” I’m going to focus on dollars and sense. In other words, I’m going to show you the only thing that matters: how each book publisher’s business model is set up. By that I mean how the four different types of publishing companies make money—because that’s the best indicator of what your publisher is going to do (or not do) for you.
By the time you’re done reading this article you’ll be able to discern what the best publishing companies are, no matter what clever terms they use. You’ll be able to see who’s going to work the hardest to make your book successful.
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The Best Publishing Companies
4 Types of Book Publishers
Every author is different, so the best publishing companies for someone else might not be the best publishing companies for you. However, I’ve included the pros and cons for each type of publishing company below to help you figure out which option is the best for you.
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The Best Publishing Companies – #1
Publishers that Pay You Up Front and Pay You Later
These are the best publishing companies. This type of book publisher (like Random House) writes you a check for your book before it’s even published. That’s how sure they are that your book will be successful. This type of up front payment is called an author advance.
If a publisher is willing to pay you money up front (and not ask you for money), it’s much more likely they’re legitimate (not trying to rip you off). It’s also much more likely they’re going to put time, energy, and marketing money into making your book successful. They’re one of the best publishing companies.
Why?
Because they have
a lot at stake.
If they don’t make your book successful, the author advance they paid you will be a loss for them. So will all of the time, energy, and money they invest in the editing, layout, cover design, physical and/or eBook production (most publishers in this category do both), distribution, sales, publicity, marketing, and advertising of your book.
This type of publisher also pays you a percentage of the money they make each time they sell a copy of your book (commonly referred to in the industry as author royalties). The percentage of money you make off each book sold will vary depending on your contract, but no matter how you slice and dice it, there’s very little risk for you working with this type of publisher—and a lot of potential upside (since the publisher is paying for everything and doing all the work).
Important: Some slimy publishers (pretending to be one of the best publishing companies) have recently started calling themselves traditional publishers, even though they’re not. They pay their authors (or some of their authors) a very small advance, sometimes $100 or (in some cases just $1), so they can say they’re a traditional publisher. But then they require you to pay them thousands of dollars for various services. I’ll explain more about this type of publisher in a moment. For now, just know that any publisher that requires you to pay them (even if they’ve paid you something as well) is NOT a traditional publisher (or one of the best publishing companies).
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The Best Publishing Companies – #2
Publishers that Only Pay You Later
Publishers in this category are sometimes some of the best publishing companies–but sometimes they aren’t. These book publishers don’t require you to pay them anything; but they don’t pay you an advance, either. Instead, they only pay author royalties. The problem with this category of publisher is that it includes reputable publishers, incompetent publishers, and nonreputable publishers.
And it can be difficult
to tell the difference.
The reputable publishers in this category are some of the best publishing companies. They’d like to pay you an author advance, but they’re not making enough money to justify it; however, they do invest their time, energy, and marketing dollars into making your book successful. These publishers don’t have as much to lose since they don’t pay advances, so there’s no getting around the fact that this type of publisher isn’t going to be as motivated to make your book successful. This type of publisher is also going to print less books (again, less of a financial risk for them). And, some publishers in this category aren’t going to create a print version of your book at all. Instead, they’ll just create an eBook (which you could do on your own and potentially make more money because you wouldn’t have to share the profit). Then they’ll produce a print book if/when they know it’s going to sell.
The incompetent publishers in this category do everything that the reputable publishers above do, but they don’t have the background and experience to sustain a successful business. Not the best publishing companies. New book publishers in this category pop up every year, then fade away into oblivion. They might say all the right things to you, and have good intentions, but they’re trying to figure everything out as they go, using your book as a guinea pig. If they want to gamble on someone’s future, I say they should gamble on their own—and go to Vegas.
Then there are the nonreputable publishers in this category, that also can’t be called the best publishing companies. They don’t care about you or your book. Again, they might say the right things… but they’re simply “playing the numbers.” They hand out book contracts like candy on Halloween to anyone with a hand out. And they invest as little time and money as possible to get your book out there. Not the best publishing companies, by a long shot. Nonreputable publishers almost always produce eBooks only (less expensive) and they create them with poor quality cover art, layout, and editing (again, pinching pennies at your expense). What are these publishers thinking? They know that some of the authors they take on are going to “get lucky” or do a lot of marketing on their own and sell a lot of books. These nonreputable publishers hope and pray that some of their authors make it big (without their help) so they can then ride their coattails… all the way to the bank.
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The Best Publishing Companies – #3
Publishers that Make You Pay Them
This type of publisher is all the way at the bottom of my list of the best publishing companies. They won’t publish your book in any format (print or eBook) unless you pay them. And, your required investment will be significant—thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars. In addition, this type of publisher will take a significant percentage of the money that comes in each time one of your books is sold.
Now, before I rip these publishers to shreds let me say…
This type of publisher is a good fit for authors who:
* Have money to burn
* Don’t need to sell books or make money on book sales
* Want to get their book published as quickly as possible
* Are okay with their publisher not selling any or many books
I don’t care if a publisher tells you that they pay some of their authors an advance (just not you) so that makes them a traditional publisher; if they ask you for money, they’re not a traditional publisher. If they were successful, they wouldn’t need any of their authors to pay them. If they believed your book could sell—and that they could sell it—they wouldn’t ask you to pay them.
Think about it.
I also don’t care if a publisher tells you that they’re “exclusive” and they only publish a select number of titles each year. It’s bull. If they’re taking money from authors, that means they’re taking money from pretty much anyone willing to pay them. For the most part, they’re just a glorified “book printer.”
So…
If a publisher asks you for money, there’s a 99% chance they’re not the best publishing company for you. If they ask you for money, it means they make virtually all of their income off the payments they collect from authors up front (and payments for additional marketing opportunities they’ll be pitching you on later).
It doesn’t matter how they word it, or what they say the money is for. They’re asking you to pay them. That means they don’t have anything to lose by simply taking your money and then doing nothing. Since they’re not investing financially in your book, they’re simply not motivated to make your book successful… the way that the best publishing companies are.
This type of book publisher is just another example of a publishing company playing the numbers. They know that some of their authors are going to “get lucky” or do a lot of marketing on their own and sell a lot of books. So these publishing companies spend most of their time marketing themselves, not you and your book.
The most offensive part of this scenario (to me, anyway) is that you can pay a publisher like this $10,000 or more and they might not even print any books. Instead, they often just create an eBook edition and physical books are printed “on demand” (that means they only print a book when someone orders one).
Again, no risk for them.
Think about it.
When a publisher like Random House pays to print 50,000 copies of a book, how motivated do you think they are to sell it? Exactly. I can’t make it any clearer than that.
Still don’t believe me?
Show me one author who’s published more than one
book with a publisher like this because they were
so happy with the results they got.
No???
That’s what
I thought.
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The Best Publishing Companies – #4
You As the Publisher
Although publishing your own book doesn’t really fit on a list of best publishing companies, I thought I should include it as an option so you could see where it fits in. This option means you doing (or at least overseeing) absolutely everything involved with your book: editing, layout, cover design, printing, distribution, sales, publicity, marketing, and advertising.
The downside to this option is obvious…
You doing everything.
Unless you want to be a publisher and not an author (spending all your time producing and selling books), this isn’t your best option. There is an upside to this option though. You get to maintain complete control, go as fast as you want, and keep all the profit. But there’s also a tremendous learning curve involved. And you’ll probably find yourself finding you no longer have time to write.
Still thinking about self-publishing?
Click here to read my two other
articles about self-publishing:
* Should I Self-Publish My Book?
And share your thoughts
and questions below…
– Mark
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MARK MALATESTA is a former literary agent turned author coach. Mark now helps authors of all genres (fiction, nonfiction, and children's books) get top literary agents, publishers, and book deals through his company 
MARK MALATESTA is a former literary agent turned author coach. Mark now helps authors of all genres (fiction, nonfiction, and children's books) get top literary agents, publishers, and book deals through his company 
Thanks a lot for your useful ideas, Mark! Time puts everything at the right place and I am getting closer to my start and all your ideas from a profi really helped me a lot. I have already registered my literary agency and now it has started to function as the first literary agency”BestsellerKZ”. I am serious about my intentions to work with you. I hope,we will enjoy the future results of our efforts. I am happy to have found you as my coach. Say my hello to Ingrid!
Thank you Bakhtygul, wonderful, happy to hear it… congratulations… and have a great week!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Very well said Marco!
Thank you Adriano, and have a great day!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Thank you for continuing to keep the dream alive. Fame has incredible timing limitations. Without funds, it even prevents pen name publishing of other topic beneficial research.
🙂
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
A beginning author writes his MS, edited by a professional editor, but can’t find representation. I did my 1st bk with a small one-person designer and “publisher” who works through Lightning Source, that prints on demand, somewhat cheaper than Create Space. It’s on the Ingram online list. The author has to sell. At least the author “sees” his book. Next, more sophisticate Emerging Author Program” publishers: more money for same. It takes 2-3 bks before u reach maturity for traditional publishing
Hi John, thanks for sharing that… the challenge is… as is the case in every industry… most people getting started in that industry don’t take sufficient time to get educated about it… or get feedback/help. That results in a lot of stress, wasted time, and disappointment. There are no guarantees… in publishing or anything… but we can certainly all do things to speed the process… increase our chances of having success… and make the process easier and more enjoyable.
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Hello Mark: You always seem to be writing about what I need, exactly when I need it. We just got off the phone discussing my brief absence from the agent/publisher search and you said, “Just keep sending out the queries and things will fall into place.” I sent out 3 on Sunday and got a very interesting rejection back on Monday (this morning.) Had a referral from John Nichols (20+ books to his credit)to a local publisher. I followed her instructions and she returned a rejection letter that said, “Our publishing company is too small for the topic of your book. You need a larger publishing company that will give you the right kind of representation that your topic deserves.” Rejection letters of course are not be what we want, but some can keep us emailing. Thank you sir.
Hi Keith, thank you… and I love it… when it comes to rejections… that’s a nice twist… and the first time… believe it or not… that I’ve seen something quite like that. 😉
Have a great week!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
I have seen some pretty successful indie publishers out there. I admire them. I don’t know how they do it. That must require some incredible knowledge and resources.
Absolutely, and, as you know, everything worth anything, nine times out of ten, isn’t easy… but worth it in the end. Here’s to sticking with it and being determined to find a way. 😉
Have a great day!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Once again Mark, spot on. Thank you.
Thank you Jeff, and have a great week!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
As always… great article Mark! It pretty much lays it out as clear as you can get. A definite map to avoid the clearly, and not so clearly marked booby-traps!
Hi Gil, always good to see you as well and glad you enjoyed the article… it is a minefield out there. 😉
Have a great week!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Hi Mark. As usual your using up my writing time with all your newsletters.Just joking. Really appreciate your effort to set things straight. Having spent six months with ‘I pay you publishers’ I decided to check in with you. My only regret is filling out the questionnaire. Again it’s taking away from my revision time. Is it necessary to answer all the questions? Please advise.
Up to you Evelyn, the more you put in… the more you get out!
Either way, have a great day and see you soon,
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
I will not name the company, but I have my novel before a subsidiary of a major publisher. They do not pay up front but do everything for their authors by partnering with the parent company. The do pay royalties.
This is my question: What is good commission? They pay 25% for the first 10,000 books and then 50% there after. If this fair/good/or highway robbery?
Hi Dave, royalties are complicated so I can’t give you a simple answer here. The most important thing is whether the royalty percentage is based on gross or net sales. Gross is better. The numbers also often vary based on the format(s) of the book, print/eBook, hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, etc. And publishers often use escalators, meaning you get a different percentage at certain points depending on how many books have sold. Best thing you can do is spend time Googling once you have more information about their terms and/or get someone in the business such as a literary attorney to look at the contract.
Have a great week,
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Hi Mark,
You certainly hit the nail on the head with this article! I went from the least noxious ‘pay-to-play’ scenario to taking over the publishing, marketing, and sales of my books. While I have a great product, avid readers, and am slowly building readership, I no longer have much time to write, and my books are not on the store shelves where they can be seen.
Hopefully, I can take advantage of your services within the next couple of months.
Kindest Regards,
Hi Will, sorry to hear that the marketing has overtaken the writing… but hopefully that will change soon… and I’d be happy to help you make the transition if possible.
Have a great week!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
As always Mark this, is an awesome and informative article. I know you worked for Random House but I also know of a guy that went with them and they did absolutely nothing to promote their ( it was actually written by 2 friends) book. I started checking and it seems that a lot, if not all, of the Big Five are now owned by large corporations and they are just pumping out books, that’s it. The information I discovered actually made me want to shy away from the big 5 and find a smaller house.
Thank you Lance!
To clarify, I never worked for Random House, although I did work for another publisher… and I have helped authors get book deals with Random House. 😉
And there are pros and cons to all publishers, big and small.
Big is typically better, but not always.
Have a great week!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Good article. I have looked at the various types of publishers, and my first take was to do it myself. I self-published through an Amazon company called Createspace.com. This may not be for everyone, but for me it was a good experience. My book is still on Amazon.com for sale. I decided now I want to go with an agent and publisher. Sorry to digress. Still, I liked the article and I will, and encourage all of us to research agents and publishers to do what we feel is right for ourselves.
Hi Chuck: I was told by agents at a recent writers conference that once you self-publish, agents are unlikely to show interest unless you sold 2-3000 copies. For me, it was a sign to put my efforts in my next book, rather than wasting them on a fruitless battle.
I believe it, agents are all over the map on those numbers… some say that it will take 20,000 or more sold to work for them… once you’ve pulled the trigger on self-publishing… but this article talks about a way to work around that in some cases: https://literary-agents.com/its-not-what-you-say/. There are a lot of things in the article, but it’s in there.
Have a great week!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Thank you Chuck… yes… to each his own… as long as an author is happy and getting the work out there in one way or another… I’m happy.
Have a great week,
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
You did it again, Mark. You set me straight and opened my eyes. All publishing houses are NOT created equal. Thanks for filling me on on the truth about them. Best regards, Your neediest and most grateful client, Pat O’Hanlon
Thank you Pat, and have a wonderful day!
🙂
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Hi Mark
Great article. People who are not well known publishing a first book, who are told they must bring a platform of potential readers, might as well do option #3 while they build that platform. I think option 3 is better than spending a lot of resources finding an agent, who then spends a lot of time finding a publisher…and the publisher willing to take them on as a new author may be small and not sell it anyway. At least they will learn to market early in their career. Teresa
Hi Teresa, as long as an author goes into any of the options I spelled out here with open eyes, and they’re not doing it out of impatience or fear… I’m happy for them.
It’s all good.
Have a great week!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Very helpful summary of what I faced in previous publishing efforts. One needs a background in economics to comprehend what is taking place in the book industry.
Hi David… thank you… and yes… it is all a learning curve!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Very informative…..
Thank you.
Kerman
You’re very welcome Kerman.
Thank you, and have a wonderful day,
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Great article, Mark. You succinctly expressed the problem and the solution for us newbies to the print world. Always love your articles. You answer the questions we need to be asking!
Thank you Meganne, and have a great week!
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
Hey mark,
Its me the problem child. I have seen everything you just seen. I mean literally. The legitimate big time boys actually spoke to me once. The handler asked me two very important questions: “Are you famous?” and “Do you know anyone famous?”. When I said no to these two questions he honestly told me that it would be extremely difficult for me to ‘get in’. I appreciate his honesty and it seems to hold true.
The greatest author you don’t know,
Paul McConnell
Hi Paul, don’t lose heart… most of the authors I’ve gotten book deals for… when I was an agent… and now as a coach… don’t have much of a platform… if any.
It is possible,
– Mark
Mark Malatesta
The Bestselling Author
http://thebestsellingauthor.com
Literary Agent Undercover
https://literary-agents.com
I just did a little more digging and found that Austin Macauley doesn’t have a very good reputation. Most Authors received a “Controbution Contract.” which is just a another version of self-publishing. I’ll wait to see what they offer and if they ask for money I will decline their services. Your advice has more than paid for itself. Lo sono uno che sa come restituire un favore Don Certo Malatesta!
🙂
Mark