When I was first working with the professor overlooking this project, she asked me in a meeting about big things like My Future and The State of the Publishing Industry, “Are you interested in working for a trade press?”
After a moment of thought, I said, “No, not really,” thinking she meant magazines about planes, trains, and automobiles.
I was very wrong, because as sci-fi/fantasy’s #1 consumer, I was in fact very interested in working for a trade press. Not trade magazines (magazines written for people in a particular industry, which I imagine led to my mistake about my professor’s comment), but trade presses (publishers putting out books for a general audience).
Discussing the industry requires some familiarity with the lingo, and unlike The People of publishing, vocab related to The House is more regular and will mean the same thing in different publishing houses and corners of the internet. So I’ve gathered the most common ways people categorize publishing so you can study up, talk smart, and not befuddle your professor by denying wanting to work in trade and then talking extensively about fantasy novels.
Traditional vs Nontraditional Modes - This is a frankly terrible way to describe this category, but it’s good to start with an understanding of what people mean when they say “traditional publishing” and what they really do not mean.
Traditional publishing - A “publishing house,” which is a company (non-profit or for-profit) that takes on an author’s project through a book deal, funds it, edits it, produces it, advertises it, and gives the author an advance/royalties for their work.
Self-publishing - The author takes on all the financial risk of their book; this includes paying for—or doing—every task that might be covered by a traditional or hybrid publisher, including editing, formatting, cover design, marketing, etc. Depending on the platform that the author publishes on, they will retain full rights over their work and earn a substantial publishing royalty rate (70% on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, compared to the 10-15% most traditional publishers offer). That being said, self-publishing means you lack a house’s huge resources, and AI is currently flooding the digital marketplace with cheap “novels” that crowd out real people’s work. While the royalties are generous, the sales seem like they’re not. And I say seem because despite the “200-250 copies sold per year” figures cited on Reddit, Quora, Substack, and other similarly scholarly websites, there’s very little real, hard data on this, and as low as 200 is, the real average copies a self-published book sells per year might be lower.
Vanity - Considered universally in publishing to be a scam—if you ever find yourself considering a book deal with a company you know little about, make sure they’re not a vanity press. Vanity presses succeed by making the author take on the financial risks of publishing, charging the author for services like editing and marketing. They offer contracts that result in few authorial rights. Vanity presses are not economically incentivized to take on projects fit for publication or work with the author to improve their project for their audience, since their profit is made through the author’s wallet, not the audience’s. Vanity presses have also been caught in shady business practices, like lying to their authors about being part of a traditional publishing house. These are not to be confused with hybrid or self-publishing models (although some vanity presses have started to masquerade as hybrid models. Do your research and ask around if something seems suspicious. Or even if something doesn’t seem suspicious. Do your research in general). Vanity presses are notorious for taking advantage of authors, and while the mainstream publishing industry isn’t exactly lucrative, you’ll be in the hole with a poorly produced book if you work through a vanity press.
Hybrid - In hybrid publishing, the author takes on some of the risk of publishing—often paying for “some or more of the production and editorial costs in exchange for the publisher’s expertise—and for higher royalties” (from the PW article linked below). They can be distinguished from vanity presses in a few ways, most succinctly and clearly by the IBPA’s 11 points of criteria which hybrid presses are expected to meet. You can peruse these at your convenience through the link below.
Audience - These terms describe what kinds of books a press will publish.
Academic - A press that specializes in scholarly works: research papers, “critical editions” (annotated and edited “classic” works), and book-length arguments, among other things. Academic presses may publish both full-length books and journals (or one and not the other). Please note that while all university presses are academic presses, not all academic presses are university presses. "University presses" refers to academic presses additionally affiliated with an academic institution (a university). So: Ohio State University Press? University and academic press. Norton? Just an academic press.
Independent/Small Press/Regional - While each of these terms literally refers to something unrelated to audience, presses that market themselves as “small” or “independent” are often either literary or mission-based presses, focusing on some interest that isn’t served in the raw publishing market—publishing niche history on a local area, or books meant to promote certain social justice issues which might not sell well, etc.
Trade - Presses that produce books for a general audience (think the Big Five, like Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster).
University - An academic press affiliated with an academic institution (a university). All university presses are academic presses, but not all academic presses are university presses. Note, too, that while nearly all academic presses are non-profits supported in part by their institutions, only about 15% of a university press’s budget comes from university subsidies. The purchase of academic works by universities is currently the backbone of the industry.
Size
“Big Five” - Designates the powerhouses in publishing, who dominate the profits and resources available to publishers. As I’m writing this, the Big Five are Penguin Random House, Hachette Books, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan, although this can change (and nearly did in the early 2020s).
This occurs primarily through acquisition—when one company buys another—or mergers—when two companies combine forces into one super-company. You may remember the phrase, “Big Four” thrown around in the early 2020s. Penguin Random House had officially offered to buy Simon & Schuster and was on track to make the acquisition until the DoJ under the Biden administration sued to block the acquisition, arguing the new company would wield too much power over author payments.
Before this, the most recent change to this group of publishing houses was in 2013, when Penguin and Random House merged to make Penguin Random House. The “Big Six” became the “Big Five” we know today.
Over the Past 25 Years, the Big Publishers Got Bigger—and Fewer | Publishers Weekly
Independent - Although sometimes when people say “indie press,” they mean a small, literary press, an independent press is simply any press that is not owned by one of the Big Five.
Small press/medium/big press - By far the squishiest terms on this list; there is no standardization here and any of them can mean kind of whatever you want. From what I can tell online, a press is most frequently considered “small” if it makes under $50 million per year (although PW seems to prefer $20 million as the small press magic number). PW defines mid-sized publishers as presses making more than $20 million but are not part of the Big Five. Which leaves “big presses” as essentially a synonym for the Big Five.
Profit models - This section glosses the two models available to presses—for-profit and not-for-profit/non-profit.
For-profit - These publishers only earn money through their revenue stream and have no obligation to reinvest their profits in their organization and can instead distribute it to shareholders and owners.
Non-profit - These publishers still earn a revenue stream from their book catalog, but they have the advantage of fundraising: their sales margins (hypothetically) don’t determine the success of their company. This allows them some leeway when it comes to making risky publishing decisions. Thus publishers can put out books that tend not to do well profit-wise, require a lot of economic input, or fail to cater to an existing profitable market.
The degree to which a nonprofit depends on its revenue stream publications depends on the publishing house: many university presses, although non-profits, rely almost entirely on their sales revenue.
Because non-profit publishers are, well, non-profits, they’re also supposed to serve the public good. This means that non-profit presses will have some mission driving them—like Blair Press uplifts Southern voices, Orion Magazine draws attention to the connection between the human and natural worlds, and Ohio State University Press (and most university presses) aims to increase knowledge in the humanities and social sciences.
Other designations
Bookseller/Retailer - Says it in the name: the people who sell the book to adoring readers; think Barnes and Noble, abebooks.com, or your local bookstore. Some publishers forge close relationships with certain booksellers (like Milkweed; check out their website for their “ecosystem” philosophy), but not all by any means.
Imprints - These are the “trade names” that a company may use to publish to certain markets. For instance, Tor Books, which specializes primarily in sci-fi/fantasy, is an imprint of Macmillan, just as “Bubly” is an “imprint” of PepsiCo.
There can be overlap among imprints within a single publishing house, as well. For instance, Tor Teen and Wednesday Books, both imprints of Macmillan, publish YA fantasy (it’s built into Tor Teen’s mission, and Wednesday Books, as a general YA imprint, also publishes YA fantasy). It’s not just the genre of books that are put out—it’s everything surrounding a brand, too.
How the relationship between the parent company and its imprints gets hashed out varies, even within a single publishing house. Imprints may share certain key staff, especially when they can be grouped together under some unified branding name. For instance, there are multiple Tor imprints: Tor Books, Tordotcom, Nightfire, Tor Teen, Bramble, and Orb. These imprints in particular may share certain members of their staffs, like their publicists. However, the editors at Minotaur Books (Macmillan’s crime imprint) don’t overlap with the editors at Tor.
How Publishing Works: Publishing Houses, Subsidiaries & Imprints | YouTube
Wholesaler - Book depots, essentially; buy books in bulk, store em, and sell to retailers.