Frequently Asked Questions
If you’re over 50 and have completed stellar work, yet are being ghosted by agents who initially were interested or seemed to be, we empathize. We’ve been ghosted and, frankly, we’re sick of it. It’s odd that while we represent the largest reading demographic, as writers, we’re often ignored. There’s that nagging feeling that no one is listening because of some ageist or misogynistic perception of what it is to be “old.”
What happened to listening to women made wise by their years? We know so many women writers of a certain age who have killer books and we want to publish them. It’s the reason we started this publishing company. Damn the dowager’s hump, and full speed ahead in commanding our own fates, women!
Smaller publishing houses like ours are often underfunded when it comes to marketing their list of titles. In starting Sibylline Press, we wanted more for our books. This problem became an opportunity to flip the publishing model and ask our authors to join us in funding their book’s promotion so we could promote early, at a higher level, benefitting us all. By partnering with our authors this way, our marketing budget increases by 25 percent, allowing us to take strategic full-page ads in major trade magazines featuring all of the season’s books for instance. So much more becomes possible together: Book tours. Publicity. Rights sales.
Additionally, we’ve opted to make our authors our publishing partners from the beginning, giving them input into both the production of their book and how we market it. In sharing our book industry expertise, our authors are better prepared to promote alongside us as we implement the marketing plan. We become a collective of very smart women, winning through collaboration. That makes our publishing model our secret weapon, which we wield for maximum benefit in a highly competitive book-publishing market.
*Authors already spend money to market their books. Nowadays authors at traditional houses are often requested to pay out of pocket for their publicist because publicity departments have been decimated. Hybrid and self-published authors pay substantially for publicity or author tours (though these expenditures rarely generate the kind of sales the expenditure promises).
When Vicki was the publisher of Foghorn Press in San Francisco, she coordinated 40 small press travel publishers across the country into a collective whose purpose was to market those publishers’ books. At the American Bookseller Association annual trade show, large publishers hosted big budget parties for booksellers. Vicki used $300 from each of the small press travel publishers, and together the collected small publishers were able to host their own fabulous party at the trade show; she invited travel media and booksellers and thus exposed their books in a way that no one small press could manage on its own.
Later, as a consultant to independent bookstores in California, Vicki set up a holiday campaign called Everyone Gets a Book and took out full page ads featuring bookstores in the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, and PBS affiliates, as well as in regional papers and Facebook. These ads were out of reach financially for any one bookseller, but together it happened. Collaboration is a strategy Vicki has implemented time and again. It’s how she thinks.
Collaboration is how the Sibyls altered Rome. It’s how little-known authors find their way to the pages of Publishers Weekly and American Bookseller and even the bestseller lists. Collaboration is a Sibyl way, and provides the impetus for Sibylline’s proprietary math: 1 x 1 = 100.
In the publishing world, despite their necessity, authors are often at the bottom of the food chain. Especially new authors. The din and competition make for a marketplace that rewards luck over talent.
But we recognize that there’s fortitude in finishing a book, making it the best it can be, and then promoting and selling it. We know – we have authors on our team. Authors are vested in their books finding their readers. The biggest problem good yet unpublished authors have is navigating the publishing world to make that happen. At Sibylline Press, we address this issue through our book industry talks and other communication. At the end of the first year of working together, our authors understand the world they are operating in. And that makes us all better prepared to take the publishing hill.
When we become your publisher, we’ll ask for your marketing co-op contribution for our initial two-year launch program as follows: $3,000 initial payment and then small monthly payments for 24 months. The author’s portion is the same for each participating author and represents 25 percent of the promotional budget; we supply the rest as described here. (Note that we provide a generous royalty on sales of your book designed to help you recoup your investment as quickly as possible.)
for A detailed LIST OF what you get for your investment see what we do as your publisher.
At Sibylline, we have big plans for your book. And we know the book publishing business. You’re going to spend money promoting your book whether you self-publish, go hybrid, or work with a traditional publisher. Why not spend it at Sibylline where your investment directly impacts the marketing of your book? As our author, you’ll step into our publishing world and sit at the table with the publisher, the designer, the publicist, and the sales manager. You’ll be a member of the design and marketing teams for your book, a role you’ll rarely encounter at any other publisher. Here, your input is valued. Here, we’re all working for the best possible outcome in production and design, marketing and sales. And once books start to sell, you can earn back your investment in your marketing through our high author royalty which we’ve designed for that purpose.
Think of Sibylline as your publishing multiplier. Because we know this business, we’re your x100 factor. With our intensive two-year publication program to launch your book, together we'll be able to hit nearly every note in the marketing symphony.
At large houses, you are one of hundreds of new books on the season’s list. Debut authors often have to fight for attention and push their publisher to promote their book beyond the one-month promotional window following launch. At small presses there may not be the resources to promote your book well.
At Sibylline, we’re committed to you. Your book will be one of six we publish each season. Not one of 300. And we’re geared up to promote intensively for two seasons and, after that, we continue to promote your book in our backlist. You won’t sink to the bottom of our list or suffer from lack of attention. Once we choose you and your book, we’re all about you and your book.
Self-publishing is readily available to everyone – perhaps too available. Indie books often are not professionally edited and produced, and are largely published by neophytes who know nothing of the publishing industry. There’s a lot to figure out as a self-publisher. For instance, most of your sales will be on Amazon – and unless you are a known quantity and know how to promote on Amazon, you will be disappointed with both your ranking and your sales. Amazon is a form of passive distribution, giving you the illusion that your book is widely available. But people have to know it’s there to find it and buy it. As well, bookstores rarely carry a book they can’t return, and if they do carry your self-published work, it’s at an almost-zero profit.
If you’d like your book sold in bookstores and to other retail and online accounts, if you’d like to give your book the best shot it can have out the gate, you’ll want a traditional publisher who operates within the framework of publishing seasons which allow time to pre-sell your book. Sibylline is a traditional publisher, evident in how we interface with the marketplace and follow publishing norms in producing, distributing, and promoting our vetted list of books. At Sibylline, you get this along with our book-industry expertise. Plus you’ll be in the company of other brilliant women over 50 equally committed to your success.
When authors can’t get their book accepted by an agent or publisher, they often consider hybrid publishing. And because they may not know much about the book-publishing business, they think hybrid is a viable option because their book will be published and possibly sold—though usually this part is a little more vague. Hybrid houses are publishers-for-hire and you are their client. They often have hidden marketing costs that add up to much more than you expect. Promotion can be limited to their own website or newsletters. You pay extra for publicity or for a book tour. You pay to print your books. To warehouse your book. You pay for returned books. The distribution to retail markets that they offer is usually passive (see the difference between passive and proactive distribution, below) and out of sync with traditional publishing seasons. And selling your books may not be their highest priority.
Sibylline Press, in contrast, is a traditional publisher. Unlike hybrid publishers, we’re not out to make money off you, the author; we make our living selling books. See the difference?
* some hybrid publishers may have less self-interest than this, but please be wary.
When authors can't get their books accepted by an agent or publisher, they might consider hybrid publishing. And because you may not know much about the book-publishing business, you think hybrid is a viable option because your book will be published and possibly sold—though usually this part is a little more vague. Hybrid houses are publishers-for-hire and you are their client. They often have hidden marketing costs that add up to much more than you expect. Promotion can be limited to their own website or newsletters. You pay extra for publicity or for a book tour. You pay to print your books. The distribution to retail markets that they offer is usually passive (see the difference between passive and proactive distribution, below) and out of sync with traditional publishing seasons.*
Sibylline Press, in contrast, is a traditional publisher. Unlike hybrid publishers, we’re not out to make money off you, the author; we make our living selling books. See the difference?
* There may be a few hybrids that are not this self-serving, but they are in the minority.
The promise of distribution by many hybrid publishers relies on the author’s lack of knowledge about the publishing industry. Yes, you can have your book on Amazon or available at Ingram, the largest wholesaler of books in the world, but these are passive distribution methods. It requires that readers or booksellers know about your book and then seek it out. No one is actually proactively selling your book. They are warehousing it and waiting for someone to order it.
Proactive distribution means having a distributor in place with a sales force who, eight or more months before publication, will be out selling your book to bookstores and other outlets. This kind of distribution is in sync with the publishing seasons (passive distribution is not). Being in sync with the publishing seasons means pre-selling and that shows up in advance sales.
It means that the day your book ships, it has already been backordered at accounts who are waiting to shelve it and sell it. And it also means that prior to this, we have time to pursue rights sales in foreign, audio, and television/movie markets, excerpts and essays to coincide with publication, and support for the book’s launch with advertising, reviews, and events.
At Sibylline Press, we have proactive distribution with Publishers Group West. PGW was founded in 1976 and is one of the world’s largest distributors of independent press titles, representing an exclusive list of publishers (including Grove/Atlantic, Counterpoint, Parallax Press, and New World Library.) They have an active sales force spanning the United States. At Sibylline, our titles are also available at wholesalers such as Ingram for booksellers ease in ordering. We also upload to Amazon and make our titles available there. Our marketing drives orders through these channels.
Besides the best path to successful publication for you and your book? You’ll be an author in an exciting new publishing company featuring the work of women writers over 50. Your funds will support collaborative marketing, advertising, and publicity over a two-year period for your book which will result in sales and recognition for your book. Your knowledge of the publishing world and process will increase exponentially based on our book industry talks and our Pre-Launch Readiness Retreat. And because we are collaborating, we offer you input on the marketing plan, and unprecedented access in the production of your book, including input on book cover and book design.
for A detailed LIST see what we do as your publisher.
Note: When your manuscript is accepted for publication, we’ll send you the detailed proprietary list of everything available to you as our publishing partner.
Sibylline offers our authors a generous royalty at the outset, with the intent of having the author recoup her contribution. We estimate this happening at the sale of about 3,000 books. Any rights sales will generate more income and speed the process. After this milestone is achieved, the royalty reverts to a traditional publishing royalty.
Write an amazing book, and get through our vetting process. Secure your spot and then we’ll contract your book to appear on Sibylline’s Fall 2023 or Spring 2024 list, or succeeding seasons. Once you’re selected, we’ll fold your monthly payments into executing the marketing plan.
Communicate and collaborate. We have monthly Zoom meetings, book industry talks, regular communications, plus resources such as shared social media posts. We have decisions to make in producing your book and marketing it. We need you at the table.
Also—and this is not part of your contract—but we fervently want you to be enthusiastic partners and enjoy this path to success. We want to love working with you, just as we want you to love working with us, for the long term!
Because we are Sibyls of a certain age ourselves, with experience in every role in the book pipeline. As publishers and editors, as book designers, marketers, publicists and rights managers, and even as struggling writers and published authors, we have sat in every position along the way. We know the ins and outs of this business, with decades in the industry, absorbing the changes with the rise of Amazon, ebooks, social media, print on demand and other technological upgrades.
We’ve built companies. Launched marketing campaigns. We’ve hosted events for authors with audiences of a thousand, been on book tours where nobody showed up. We have experience, both successes and flops. You’ll benefit from our experience, and in knowing we Sibyls are holding each other and succeeding together as only women can. We trust in you and your book. Trust us to help you succeed. (See our bios for details on our backgrounds.)