An Interruption in Disruption

A Post by Kurt Milberger

Printers, Old, Abandoned, Wounds_and_Crack, pixabay

Like other traditional industries, publishing struggles to adapt and change. Everyone agrees that the system is broken, they just don’t agree on exactly how it’s broken or what can be done to fix it. Consequently, like other traditional industries, publishing seems ripe for disruption by eager upstarts with bold ideas for reinventing the industry. And, like eager upstarts in other industries, bold disruptions often seem to do more harm than good.

Last November, I wrote about the emergence of 8th Note press, TikTok’s publishing venture, which promised to harness the power of social media virality to drive the book market. An imprint of Zando, 8th Note claimed to make “waves in the publishing industry with a focus on contemporary fiction that resonates with Millennial and Gen Z readers.” They hoped to turn the publishing model on its head by publishing books that fed current trends on social media, driving rather than being driven by the algorithm.

They started that process by acquiring self-published books and transforming them into paperbacks, and then they began acquiring new books from debut authors. According to Alexandra Alter, “the plan was to release 10 to 15 titles a year, with a focus on romance, romantasy and young adult fiction. Later, the imprint indicated to agents that it was expanding into science fiction and fantasy.”

Harnessing the power of TikTok to market their books seemed like a great idea to at least a couple dozen authors who eagerly agreed to the company’s deal, which “included a social media marketing campaign, royalties and an advance of $3,500 per book.” But, just last month, before the press could make much of impression, ByteDance (TikTok’s owner) shut it down. Shuttering their websites after informing authors in May of the press’s disbanding, 8th Note has begun “returning publication rights to authors” and “taking down digital editions of their books, effectively unpublishing them.”

According to NetGally, 8th Note released about thirty titles in the two short years of its run. None of them viral hits, few of them receiving much marketing support for their small print runs, and all of them, now, effectively unpublishable as few traditional houses are going to take a shot of republishing an already published novel that didn’t score a hit for the would-be-king-making publisher. What’s worse, many of these first-time authors are still waiting for their sales statements and royalty payments from 8th Note.

If another defunct nontraditional publisher is any example, they’ll end up waiting a long time. Formed in 2010, Unbound publishing was supposed to “help authors avoid the whims of sales-obsessed publishers by pitching their ideas directly to the people who really matter: the readers” (Duerden). Basically “Kickstarter but for Books,” Unbound set up a website where authors would pitch their books, often in the form of book trailers and other promotional material, to readers who would then pledge to support the book. For successfully funded campaigns, Unbound would use the money to offer a negligible advance, produce and distribute the books (Faber & Faber agreed to distribute some Unbound titles), and split the royalties from future sales fifty-fifty with the author.

Back when it was announced in 2011, The Independent described Unbound as “a small but key revolution in the world of book publishing,” and more than a few big names threw their support behind the idea, including Kate Mosse and Philip Pullman, who called it “an idea whose time has come.” Earlier this year, that idea’s time had already passed, and Unbound went into administration, the UK’s equivalent of bankruptcy.

In the process, the company was sold to Boundless, a new corporation organized by the same folks with the same big-tech promises now fueled by AI, and dozens of Unbound authors revealed they were owed unpaid royalties for books they’d published with the press. In the most egregious example, Tom Cox reports he’s owed a “five-figure-sum” for royalties on the seven books he published with Unbound stretching back to May 2024.

According to the press, the bankruptcy and restructuring cleared their debts and “all monies owed to authors by Unbound will be honoured by Boundless IP Limited.” But authors are right to be skeptical of a press that was supposed to hold their share of royalties in trust to pay out at regular intervals but instead blew them on operating, development, and other costs.

Both of these would-be publishers learned the fundamental lesson of the publishing industry the hard way: Success is unpredictable, random even, as former Random House CEO Markus Dohle infamously put it. Sometimes you have a viral hit like Fifty Shades of Grey that allows the press to pay out $5000 to every employee. Sometimes your eagerly awaited new novel gets cancelled before it even comes off the press.

Traditional publishing has developed a number of semi-reliable strategies to help mitigate the risk. They invest in celebrity and political memoirs, which are sure to return their investment. They rely on established, bestselling authors to carry their lists. And they conglomerate their competitors. Indie presses, too, design for these difficulties. Many, like Greywolf Press and Deep Vellum, rely on nonprofit and government grants to subsidize their earnings. Others make publishing part of a portfolio of activities that include things like selling merch and other services (often publishing services, such as editing and typesetting for self-published authors). Maybe, too, it’s important to remember that 8th Note and Unbound (especially) seem to have failed as much due to poor management as to any fundamental misunderstanding of the way disruptive tactics might help shake up the publishing industry.

Since the advent of digital self-publishing, it has become increasingly clear that publishers, like record companies before them, operate an often-predatory scheme to extract value from authors. As services like development, editing, publication, and marketing continue to become more accessible outside of traditional structures, the failure of these disruptors demonstrates that it’s not enough for a publisher to simply provide the services of publishing. Instead, any revolution in publishing must begin with a commitment to the workers who make the industry possible. From authors to their agents, copyeditors, publishers, and publicists, sustaining people ought to be the priority of every publisher.