The Hero’s Journey

We are a hybrid publisher. Hybrid publishing sits between traditional publishing and self-publishing.

Traditional publishing has an extremely high barrier to entry, with 99% of authors being rejected, even their idea is solid and their writing is strong. Self-publishing is the opposite: anyone can upload a book, which is great for accessibility but also means there’s very little quality control, hence the poor reputation of self-published books.

Hybrid publishing sits in the middle. Hybrid publishers carefully assess submissions because the books need genuine commercial value and reader appeal, but they often also believe that important voices shouldn’t be shut out of publishing.

It’s also a middle ground financially. In traditional publishing, the publisher funds everything but royalty rates are around 5-10% for the author, and this is also shared with their literary agent. With self-publishing, the author pays for everything themselves. With hybrid publishing, the author and publisher share the production costs and royalties, so both sides are committed to creating the best possible book.

Even the timescales sit in the middle. Traditional publishing can take 2–3 years. Self-publishing can happen very fast, sometimes too fast. Hybrid publishing aims to balance quality with speed, so books are produced properly but without taking years to get into readers’ hands.

Yes. It’s your book. You keep full ownership and copyright of your work. You simply license the book to us for an agreed period so we can publish and distribute it professionally.

You’ll approve key decisions and have opportunities for input, but the whole point of working with a publisher is that you don’t have to become one yourself. Our aim is to make the process as easy and stress-free as possible for authors while creating a genuinely high-quality book.

Most authors come to us because they’re already busy running businesses, leading teams, or building companies. They don’t have time to spend months or years learning about editing, cover design, metadata, printing, distribution, and marketing.

A lot of self-published books struggle commercially because authors make decisions based on personal taste rather than reader expectations or publishing experience. We make decisions based on what will give the book the strongest chance of success in a commercial market.

We believe there is no “one right” publishing path for every author. For some authors, self-publishing is absolutely the right route.

However, professionally publishing is a huge amount of work. Editing, cover design, typesetting, metadata, printing, distribution, marketing are all highly skilled roles. Get these wrong and it can damage your reputation, land poor reviews, and waste precious time and money.

Most people wouldn’t try to fix their own car unless they knew what they were doing. Publishing is the same. Authors work with us because they want experts to handle the parts they don’t have the time or specialist knowledge to do themselves.

If you’re not sure which publishing path is right for you, please check out our Hero’s Compass package first as we can help you discover which path would be best for you and your book.

We mainly work with founders, entrepreneurs, and leaders who are often subject matter experts and first-time authors. Many of our authors have something meaningful to say but don’t necessarily see themselves as “natural writers”. Some are dyslexic, neurodivergent, or speak English as a second language, and some find writing a book challenging.

As such, most our authors are incredibly knowledgeable in their field but need help turning that knowledge into a professionally structured, commercially viable book.

We’re especially interested in working with people whose ideas challenge industries, improve lives, or genuinely contribute something valuable to the world.