So you’ve decided to publish a book. You’ve looked into your options, and now you’re stuck wondering: what’s right for me? Traditional vs. Hybrid vs. Self-Publishing?
The honest answer is that it depends on your goals, your budget, your timeline, and how much of the process you’re willing to take on yourself. The path you choose doesn’t just determine how your book gets printed — it defines your role in the process, how much of the royalties you keep, and ultimately, the quality of the finished product.
Below, we break down the three main publishing pathways — traditional, hybrid, and self-publishing — and how each one works at Alkira Publishing.
Watch the video, then/or check out the notes below.
The Three Publishing Models, Explained
Traditional Publishing
This is the legacy model most people picture when they think of “getting published.” The publisher covers the cost of publishing but keeps the majority of the royalties. What’s left goes to your literary agent, who then takes their own cut (typically around 15%) before passing on your share.
Traditional publishers are usually the big, long-established houses — and most won’t consider your manuscript without an agent first. Landing an agent can itself take years, and securing a publishing deal after that is highly competitive.
If you do land a deal, expect a process that takes a couple of years before your book actually hits shelves. The upside is real: the prestige of a traditional deal, access to the publisher’s publicity machine, and a spot in brick-and-mortar bookstores — though typically for a window of only about three months, unless the book performs exceptionally well. And even then, you’ll likely still be doing a fair amount of your own promotion. It’s also worth knowing that having an existing social media following is increasingly a factor publishers weigh when deciding what to pick up.
Hybrid Publishing
Hybrid publishing sits in the middle. Like traditional publishing, it’s selective — reputable hybrid publishers won’t take on just any manuscript. Unlike traditional publishing, though, the author covers the cost of publishing and, in return, keeps the majority of the royalties.
This is Alkira Publishing’s model. Authors are published under the Alkira name and retain 90% of royalties — well above the industry-standard minimum of around 85% for hybrid deals.
A word of caution: standards vary a lot across hybrid publishers. Some present themselves as selective when they aren’t, overcharge authors, and deliver a substandard book despite big promises. It’s worth vetting any hybrid publisher carefully before signing on.
Self-Publishing
With self-publishing, a service provider will typically publish almost any manuscript for a fee, handling the process on your behalf. If it’s genuine self-publishing, the book goes out under your name, and you keep 100% of the royalties. As a rule of thumb: whenever your book is published under your own name, you should be getting all of the royalties.
At the fully independent end of the spectrum, you can also do everything yourself — learning the process from scratch and hiring individual service providers (editors, designers, formatters) as needed.
Alkira’s self-publishing imprint, Escarpment Publishing, sits between these two extremes and offers two distinct options, detailed below. One note: Escarpment doesn’t publish just anything — the content still needs to be socially responsible.
A Closer Look at Alkira’s Three Pathways
1. Alkira Publishing — Selective Hybrid
Alkira is the flagship, “gold class” option: a genuinely selective hybrid imprint with high editorial standards to protect brand integrity. The mission is to publish top-quality books while actively nurturing the author’s talent — offering the prestige and rigor of a traditional house within a more collaborative partnership.
- Royalties: 90% to the author
- Editorial process: Comprehensive, high-level editing; strict editorial benchmarks must be met
- Creative control: Alkira has final say on things like covers and editorial decisions, but works collaboratively with authors to reach a result everyone’s happy with
- Genres: Fiction and narrative memoir only (a narrative memoir is one written in a novel-like style)
For many authors, working with Alkira is genuinely a learning experience — books that aren’t quite publication-ready get the chance to work with the editorial team and reach professional standards. Only manuscripts that show real promise are accepted.
Best for: authors who want their book fully vetted and polished by a professional imprint, and who are prepared to invest in the level of editing that requires.
2. Escarpment Publishing: Full Service
If your book is non-fiction, a picture book, or you’d rather skip a submission process entirely — or you want full creative control, or simply disagree with an editor’s suggestions — Escarpment’s Full Service package is the better fit.
- Royalties: 100%, since the book is published under your own Ingram Spark and KDP accounts
- Editorial process: You decide exactly how much editing you want, and can use your own editorial team if you prefer
- Creative control: You have final say on every creative decision — you’re the CEO
- Your responsibility: Setting up and managing your own Ingram Spark/KDP accounts, royalties, and book orders (more straightforward than it sounds)
You still get the same design team and technical setup as the Alkira model — the difference is that there’s no editorial “gatekeeper.” The final call is entirely yours.
Best for: authors who want total creative control without doing the technical legwork themselves.
3. Escarpment Publishing: Assisted Self-Publishing
This is Alkira’s most affordable pathway, designed for the author who wants to do most of the work themselves but doesn’t want to fall into common traps like poor cover design or layout errors.
- What’s included: Professional editors and book designers, a step-by-step guide, video tutorials, and a publishing consultant on call whenever you get stuck
- Your role: Doing the bulk of the publishing work yourself, with a safety net in place
Best for: the hands-on author who wants to learn the process but still have support close by if — or when — something trips them up.
So, Which Path Is Right for You?
It comes down to your goals and your preferred way of working. Ask yourself:
- Do I want the quality and prestige of a vetted imprint, even if that means meeting strict editorial standards? → Alkira Publishing
- Do I want total creative control, without doing all the design and technical setup myself? → Escarpment Full Service
- Do I want to do the work myself, but with expert guidance and a safety net? → Escarpment Assisted Self-Publishing
Are you a “set it and forget it” author, or someone who’s happy to get their hands dirty and learn the ropes? Your answer probably points to your best-fit pathway.
Whichever route you choose, the goal is the same: a book built to today’s market standards, positioned for genuine global availability, and turned from a draft into a legacy-grade publication.
Ready to choose your path? Read our submission page to get started.
If you found this helpful, share it with a fellow writer who’s weighing their publishing options.
I think I heard you mention how ‘vetting’ is important. I agree.
I’d like to present you with a tiny editorial mystery. There’s something not quite right about this passage, but it’s not quite right on purpose. I would imagine that you can very likely spot it. What I’m looking for is to get an idea about whether you think breaking certain rules might be OK under certain circumstances.
Shorty glared up at me, face as hard as a loan office manager.
I shrugged.
Maybe the sparring dynamic won’t work as well with cops brandishing loaded weapons. I’ll be a model citizen, instead.
Mmm, nope. Likely not.
Our ‘hero’ seems to be a kind of a squat little fire-plug shaped fella. Heighth, width, and depth, all about the same.
“So I guess when you get those loafers shined, you just have to take the guy’s word for it, huh?”
“What?”
They are not ‘rules’; they are guidelines. I say this a lot but still people refer to them as ‘rules’ and talk about breaking them. If you see them as guidelines then you’ll understand that it isn’t a matter of always following them; it’s a matter of knowing them, so you know when you should follow them and when you can not follow them with effect. But to answer your question in your words ‘breaking certain rules’ is fine in certain circumstances.
As for your passage. The problem with it is that you don’t tell us who is speaking or to whom the word ‘hero’ is referring. That may be clear in a larger excerpt, but taken out of context like this, the passage doesn’t make much sense once the word ‘hero’ comes in. And that’s the all-important guideline: always make sure that what you’ve written makes sense.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
It is out of context, but the context would have been too much here (I’d love to give you the entire context!)
In context, it does make sense. Briefly, the protagonist is dealing with detectives who showed up after an aggravated armed assault break-in where he had to defend lives, so he’s a bit wound up. He doubts the veracity of the detectives, and unnecessarily needles them a bit.
What my focus is here is the spelling. I spelled the word ‘height’ incorrectly, on purpose.
‘Heighth, width, and depth, all about the same.’ With all three words ending with the same consonant sound, it gives the rhythm a comedic aspect, without confusing the reader. Subtle, yes. But if I’d spelled ‘height’ correctly, that would have diluted the comedic aspect. Read it both ways out loud, and you’ll get what I’m saying.
I also kind of prefer a main protagonist to not be all that perfect. Maybe this inspiration comes from Mark Twain, who did things similar to this in character diction. Since I write in first-person conversational, sometimes a little diction comes through in the narrative.
The ‘guideline’ is to always spell correctly. This is likely not something that would land with a reader consciously, but everything lands unconsciously with everyone all the time, and as I’m sure you are aware, evoking emotion is the goal of every good writer, and emotion happens only in the unconscious mind.
Had I been doing a copy edit on this, I would have accepted the alternate spelling if it were direct speech, and hence a spelling for a dialect, or if the narrator had an already established dialect or the purpose of this was to establish such a dialect. Dialects in the narration are best initially established through direct speech. So, yes, dialect is when it’s okay to not spell correctly.
Thank you. Your input is quite valuable to me.
I am trying to keep the dialogue and the way characters think common with the location, which is Boston, Massachusetts. But the fact that I write in ‘first-person conversational’ might not be quite enough then.
I’m considering changing this so that the character says this line under his breath.
There are very common practices and words (that are not really words) in modern English dialect such as ‘gonna’ for ‘going to’ and ‘wanna’ for ‘want to’, and dropping the ‘g’ on a participle or gerund, all of which can be used strategically to create a rhythm or elevate the impact of the words, assuming that’s not attempted too often.
I try not to do that in the narrative, and sparingly in dialogue, but a few of those have been sneaking into my conversational narrative, and now I’m thinking maybe I should change that. And every opportunity for a contraction has to be an individual artistic choice, does it not?
My excuse has been ‘this is my authorial voice’, but now I’m thinking I should keep the narrative a bit more formal, even though in the narrative, it’s coming from a character and not directly from me as the author.
If you have an opinion on that, I would love to hear it. I get the impression that you understand these things pretty intimately, and I find that impressive (and maybe a little too rare, elsewhere). I’m beginning to see possibilities with Alkira.
Thanks so much.
Hi Tom
I’m afraid I don’t have time to give your queries the attention they deserve. You can, however, book me to do a manuscript appraisal, and then you’ll get my undivided attention.