Why I Regret Publishing with “Hybrid Publisher” New Degree Press
It’s hard for me to admit when I was wrong, when I was gullible, and particularly when I didn’t follow my gut and instead plowed ahead because of pride, convenience, or sheer pig-headedness.
My publishing journey with New Degree Press was a very important lesson in what happens when I don’t follow my gut and listen to those more knowledgeable than myself. I believed in someone and something because I wanted them to be right and wanted it to be true.
New Degree Press is what is called a “Hybrid Publisher.” They were not transparent about this when I was introduced to them, but have since become slightly more upfront about what their process is and how it works. Hybrid publishing is when you pay (or crowdfund to pay) for someone to connect you with an editor, cover designer, and layout designer and then you can self-publish your book under that publisher’s imprint. You get their logo on the spine of the book and the ability to say that you are not self-published.
Having a publisher’s logo and name on your book can be an important indicator of the “legitimacy” of your work. Having a publisher of any kind can help get your book into bookstores and you also have the added benefit of being able to say things like “My publisher thinks…” and “On a call with my publisher today…” However, not all publishers are created equal, and the veneer of legitimacy provided by a hybrid publisher like New Degree Press can only go so far.
How I Got Hooked
1. I had an idea for a book.
It was a memoir. Yes, another memoir by a thirty-something white lady. But I was confident in my story being unique and my writing being engaging enough for people to care, even if they didn’t know who I was. I’d also had friends and strangers who had heard my stories and read my social media posts asking me for years when I was going to turn all of this into a book. So I was primed and ready.
2. A friend who had recently published her first book posted about her publisher, New Degree Press, accepting new authors.
From everything she had posted in the previous year about her process in writing and publishing a book, the process sounded pretty legit. There was an initial writing program called the “Creator’s Institute” which had originally been a Georgetown class. This was the portion of the publishing journey where you did the vast majority of your writing. Then, if your manuscript was deemed “good enough” you would be green-lit to publish. The idea that my work might be rejected was very reassuring to me, as I didn’t want to write something mediocre. I wanted feedback and editors that would take my good story and make it a great book.
3. I wrote a half-way decent manuscript and got the green-light.
The developmental editor I was paired with through New Degree Press left much to be desired. However, I’d only paid $400 for her services, so I didn’t begrudge this too much. As an editor myself, $400 is an exceptionally low rate to edit an entire manuscript over several months. I figured you get what you pay for, but I knew I’d written something that could at least be fodder for a truly good editor to tear apart and help me put back together. So I was not surprised when I got the green light to move forward with publishing.
I was, however, slightly surprised when almost 100 of the 120 people who had begun this journey with me also got the green-light, particularly people who hadn’t met the basic requirements like word-count and a completed story arc.
4. I was then presented crowd-funding and our publishing date as the next steps.
This is the moment of greatest regret in my publishing journey. It all felt rushed. It all felt superficial. And it was. We were presented the New Degree Press publication journey as the next step in a process we were already a part of. I believe they’ve made a clearer distinction now between the writing phase, known as the “Creator’s Institute,” which has a very low price-tag, and the next step of publishing with New Degree Press. There was very little time between these phases, and I believe time would have allowed me to take a breath and do a bit more research.
At this stage, I could have looked more critically at the types of books NDP had previously published. I could have asked more critical questions about the upcoming costs and timeline. I could have looked a bit closer at the LinkedIns of the editor I was paired with, the cover designer I was assigned, and the Head of Publishing at NDP. But I wanted it all to go well. I didn’t understand that I was essentially self-publishing. I didn’t take a critical look at what I was saying yes to because I wanted it to go well.
I didn’t trust myself to take my time and instead rushed ahead toward a very tight deadline to decide whether I wanted to pursue publication. I took my green-light to publish at face value and put my foot on the gas, launching into the next steps as they were laid out for me.
This is when the costs started adding up and the red flags started becoming harder and harder to ignore.
What it Actually Cost
$400 for my editor during the “Creator’s Institute” portion of the New Degree Press program. This was the first six months when I did the vast majority of my writing and worked with my “Developmental Editor.”
$6,000 crowdfunded to “publish” the paperback ($4,000) and create the audiobook ($2,000).
I contributed $2,000 to this cost when it became clear that there wasn’t a way to reasonably reach this goal. To my knowledge, most authors in my cohort at least partially funded their own crowdfunding efforts.
I also requested (and received) a refund for the $2,000 I’d raised/contributed toward the production of the audiobook when it became clear that the process would be me sitting in my closet with my iPhone recording my book. I thought that $2k was going to get me studio time and someone to professionally master and edit the book. I was wrong.
Additional costs not through NDP directly:
$500 to hire additional editors when the ones provided through NDP didn’t give me any actionable feedback and didn’t give me edits in a timely fashion (or at all).
$825 to promote with NetGalley.
$125 for new author headshots.
$200 for postage to send out signed copies to crowdfunding supporters.
$500 to hire a publicist.
When I subtract out the refund and the amount that was crowdfunded, the cost to me wasn’t terribly high as far as hybrid publishing goes. New Degree Press is well below market rate for a vanity publisher. And you get what you pay for.
What You Are Actually Doing: Assisted Self-Publishing
New Degree Press pairs you with editors, a cover designer, and a layout designer. However, at the end of the day, you are self-publishing on several platforms, namely: Amazon, KOBO, and IngramSpark. You are uploading your own files and doing all of your own legwork and management of your self-published book that is under the imprint of “New Degree Press.”
Want your book on Goodreads? You’ll need to put it up. You will need to ship out your pre-orders, you will need to order proof copies (though NDP won’t tell you this is something you can do, you can if you wish, and it’s worth doing), you will need to order author copies. Everything to do with the actual act of publishing your book is on your shoulders as the author.
The Red Flags I Ignored
1. They do not list their prices on their website.
Since signing on to self-publish through New Degree Press I’ve learned a lot more about hybrid publishing. Many hybrid publishers are reticent to share their pricing info, but most at least have it listed somewhere on their website. In fact, as of the writing of this article, nowhere on New Degree Press’s website do they even mention that there are any costs involved.
2. They’ve published hundreds of books, but there are no clear themes or criteria for what they publish.
How can they match you with a good editor, cover designer, or beta readers (we had to find our own beta readers) if they do not specialize or demonstrate an understanding of specific genre branding in any way?
3. New Degree Press started as a college class and is run by someone who took that class three years ago.
I justified this one in a lot of different ways when going through my publishing process. Georgetown is a prestigious university. The class this imprint grew out of was a really amazing idea. The Head of Publishing is a recent college grad and has more energy than just about any human I’ve ever met. He will go to the ends of the earth to try to answer every question and cover every base. But ultimately, there is no one with experience running the show there. There is a hell of a lot of enthusiasm and excitement for people becoming authors, but very little knowledge and experience about crafting high-quality books.
4. The lack of critical feedback and volume of positive feedback.
At one point my Marketing and Revisions Editor actually told me that she was spending less time working on my manuscript than the others she was assigned in my cohort because I was “just such a good writer already.” Well, thanks for the compliment, but unfortunately, that doesn’t help my book much.
Until my manuscript made it to my copy editor (who was incredible and the best thing about the entire NDP process), I had hardly received any substantive edits. I hired an editor I’d worked with previously who I trusted to really tear the thing apart, but I had to take that initiative for myself.
5. Fake reviews and praise quotes
I’m not entirely naive. I know that many book reviews and praise quotes are fake, but the expectation that we were supposed to write fake reviews for our fellow authors and provide them with praise quotes for the cover of their book based solely on reading their introduction was a hard pill for me to swallow. So I didn’t. I decided I wouldn’t write reviews for books I hadn’t read and didn’t expect my fellow authors to do the same for me.
Unfortunately, these fake reviews are a huge part of the NDP marketing strategy, and choosing not to participate in them means I have very few Amazon reviews of my book.
Another huge part of the NDP marketing strategy is to price your ebook at $0.99 and Venmo everyone you know $1 and ask them to buy a copy and write a verified review. I didn’t feel comfortable participating in this either. I’m not sure there is anything morally wrong with this approach, it just didn’t feel good to me. I, naively, wanted my book to earn its reviews and wanted people to pay a decent price for it. So I’ve kept my ebook priced at $8.99 and currently have 9 reviews from real readers.
6. They have no financial stake in the success of your book.
This is a big one. New Degree Press has a financial stake in you publishing your book and in you becoming an author, but that stake is in you paying or crowdfunding to pay to publish with them. They don’t need you to sell a single copy for their financial model to keep working. They don’t need your book to be good.
My Book Journey Since Publishing
I used NetGalley to promote my book. This was a decision I do not regret. NDP didn’t suggest NetGalley, but many authors I read and love have reviews from the amazing members of NetGalley who get a free copy of the ebook in exchange for an honest review.
I’ve had over 500 (free) downloads on the site and almost 50 Goodreads ratings and 32 reviews. Real reviews by people who have actually read the book, not reviews by fellow cohort authors who pretended to read my first chapter.
I hired a publicist. We worked together for a month or two and helped me book one podcast interview. However, as the US turned its collective attention to the social revolution sparked by George Floyd’s murder by Derek Chauvin and his fellow Minneapolis Police Officers, I pulled back on marketing my memoir. It wasn’t the story the world needed at that moment, and it was still slowly but surely finding the few people it needed to reach. Positive (and the occasional negative) reviews were still trickling in.
I want to be transparent about numbers here, even though it sends me into a bit of a shame spiral.
I’ve sold about 200 copies of my book. This includes the 100 sold as part of my crowdfunding presale.
Who Shouldn’t Consider Publishing with NDP (or any hybrid publisher)
Writers.
This may seem like an over-simplification, but it’s 100% accurate. New Degree Press is not equipped to support writers. It is equipped to help you create a book that could be a sales funnel, vanity project, or personal milestone.
If you take the craft of writing seriously, have a story you’ve been stewing on for years or decades, and want someone to tear it apart bit by bit so it can be built back up into something worth sharing in a meaningful way with a large audience, New Degree Press (or most hybrid publishers) are not your best option.
New Degree Press and much of the hybrid-publishing world are also very “one size fits all.” I’m not saying that traditional publishers don’t have their formulas as well, but if you’re someone who has a very specific vision and wants control over that vision, hybrid-publishing can become a very frustrating experience.
Who Might Consider Publishing with NDP
Entrepreneurs or students with a few thousand dollars to throw at a book project.
New Degree Press does have the formula down to help teach non-writers who know a lot about something how to craft their story and shape it into a book. If you’re interested in writing a book as part of a sales funnel, to land more speaking gigs, or just to add an air of legitimacy to your already established career, hybrid publishing could be a great way to add that “My Book” section to your website and “author” to your LinkedIn. Similarly, if you’re a student who has the cash to throw around or has a big enough social following or network to help fund your project, it is a pretty cool thing to have published a book before you even graduate.
You also may want to go the Hybrid publishing route with NDP or another publisher because you just want to get a book out there and do it quickly with very little critical feedback. I truly don’t think there is anything wrong with that, if that’s what you’re looking for. Just know that’s what you’re going to get.
What I Would Do Differently
I’m not a publishing expert, which is why I should have trusted my talent as a writer to someone who was. There are myriad problems with traditional publishing, but the answer to those problems isn’t hybrid publishing, in my opinion.
I should have shopped my book around to agents. It deserved it. It deserved someone to take a creative and financial stake in its success that wasn’t just me. I would rather have spent a year shopping my book around to agents, learning through the process of rejection, than getting superficial yeses and premature green-lights.
I didn’t do my research, I didn’t trust my instincts, and I was blinded by praise and my belief in the power of my own words. If my book had failed to get an agent, I wish I had self-published under my own imprint. I didn’t take enough time to do the research to know that I could put a logo on the spine of my book without spending thousands of dollars to do it. It also would have been easier to ensure the quality of editors and designers involved in the process of my book had I self-published, and I could have ensured they received a fair wage for their time by paying them directly.
It feels exhausting to admit that my book has gone as far as it can go for now. It is demoralizing to realize that all those people who told me that self-publishing or hybrid-publishing a memoir was a bad idea were right. I am terrified of the “I told you so”s, even if they never come. I hear them.
I don’t believe that New Degree Press set out to take advantage of me or anyone else. I think they genuinely believe in their mission to “help you publish, and then help you use your book to create impact and drive outcomes.” They are now more transparent about referring to their process as “assisted self-publishing” to help explain the nature of hybrid-publishing to would-be authors.
However, if a publisher has no financial stake in the success of your book, only in the publication of your book, they are going to have a limited investment in the quality of your book.
Ultimately, my book deserved better, and my guess is that yours probably does too.
Finally, here are my top 3 resources if you’re trying to decide how to choose your own publishing adventure:
1. Courtney Maum’s newsletter “Get Published and Stay Published” and her book “Before and After the Book Deal”
