Professional publishing to help you design your book
BOSS Books is a full-service hybrid publishing house. We hold the line on industry quality. You keep 100% of the revenue.
- Royalties
- Your revenue from book sales. This is the number that decides what publishing actually earns you.
Control, quality, and what you keep
Two of these routes ask you to sacrifice something real. The third was built to stop asking.
Self-publishing
Fully independent
Timeline: entirely yours
- You choose everything, including the pace.
- No quality control, and no one to catch what you cannot see in your own manuscript.
- No guidance on cover design, content editing, or marketing.
- The result usually looks self-published, because it is.
Hybrid publishing
Fully supported, still yours
Timeline: published within a year
- Design control, with a professional guiding the decisions rather than making them for you.
- Industry-standard quality control on the manuscript and the design.
- A cover and interior that match traditional publishing.
- You pay up front, and then the revenue is yours.
Traditional publishing
Gatekept
Timeline: one and a half to two years
- Largely closed unless you already have a large readership or a public profile.
- An advance of roughly $5,000 to $19,000 if you are offered a deal.
- A royalty of roughly 8 to 15% of the cover price, and it only starts reaching you once the advance has been earned back.
- No say over the cover, the editing, or the marketing plan. A team of 25 to 30 people works on your book, and none of them answer to you.
7 questions you need to ask before publishing
Here are the top questions we want you to answer before you commit a year or two of your life to a manuscript.
Self-publishingYou do, with no guidance
Hybrid · BOSS BooksYou do, guided by a professional designer
TraditionalThe publisher does
Self-publishingWhatever you arrange yourself
Hybrid · BOSS BooksProfessional content editing, to industry standard
TraditionalProfessional, and not up to you
Self-publishingUsually recognisable as self-published
Hybrid · BOSS BooksIndistinguishable from a Big Five release
TraditionalBig Five standard
Self-publishingAs fast or slow as you want
Hybrid · BOSS BooksWithin one year
TraditionalOne and a half to two years
Self-publishingAnyone
Hybrid · BOSS BooksAnyone with a book worth making well
TraditionalEstablished authors, large followings, public figures
Self-publishingWhatever you choose to spend
Hybrid · BOSS BooksAn up-front investment in the work
TraditionalNothing, and you are paid an advance
Self-publishing100% of royalties
Hybrid · BOSS Books100% of royalties
Traditional8 to 15%, and only after the advance is earned back
A Big Five book, on your terms, with the revenue still yours
BOSS stands for Being of Sacred Service, and the model follows from that. We are not a printing service that takes your file and sends it off, and we are not a publisher that takes your book away from you. We sit with the work.
Traditional publishing pays you an advance, then keeps 85 to 92% of everything your book earns afterwards. Hybrid publishing reverses it. You invest in the work up front, and every dollar the book earns after that comes to you.
Done with you
You stay at the centre of the decisions. We bring the industry standard to every one of them, so you are choosing between good options rather than guessing. Your cover, your structure, your voice, made rigorous.
Done for you
When you would rather write and let the production happen around you, we take it from manuscript to finished book. You approve the work at each stage, and it arrives held to the same standard either way.
Nobody picking your book off a shelf should be able to tell it wasn't made by a Big Five house. That is the whole standard.
Your book deserves both quality and creative control
Tell us what you are writing, and we will tell you honestly whether hybrid publishing is the right route .
BOSS Books · Being of Sacred Service