How New Degree Press has put publishing power in the hands of authors

“We sold 700 copies during my presale campaign,” shared Nicole Bianchi, author of Small Brave Moves (New Degree Press, 2021) and partner at Bravium HD. “Most first-time authors sell 100-150 books on average, and we did 7x that before the book even came out.  That’s the real power of pre-sale publishing.”

New Degree Press [www.NewDegreePress.com] has pioneered this new and innovative approach to community-powered publishing inside the $26 billion publishing industry.

“We believe that every author should be the owner of their work,” says Brian Bies, the head of publishing at New Degree Press.  “It’s shocking that most authors today keep less than 4-5% of the revenue from every book they sell. If an author is doing most of the work, then they should more directly benefit. We believe given the changes in the creator economy, there has to be a better way.”

But to find that better way, the New Degree Press team would need to look to unusual experts to find a fresh perspective.  Leaning on the insights from some of the world’s leading experts in the creator economy including Chase Jarvis, NY Times bestselling author, and founder/CEO of Creative Live, Daniel Houghton, former CEO of Lonely Planet, one of the largest book publishing companies in the world, Joshua Schwartz, CEO of book marketing platform Pubvendo, Robert Stevens, the former GeekSquad founder and Chief Technology Officer of Best Buy, David Marquet, the President of Intent-Based Leadership Institute and bestselling author Rated #1 Business Book by Forbes, and other, the team recognized there was actually a huge opportunity to become the premier creator-focused publisher in the world.

“We saw what was happening with the explosion of crowdfunding across startups and products, and looked to see how we might unlock that for authors,” continued Bies.  “What we discovered was a simple way to turn authors into owners while simultaneously helping every author we worked with sell more books.  It was light lightning in a bottle.”

Said Bianchi, “I assumed everyone just had to give up something to get a book out — but rather than finishing the book first, I offered the idea of the book which helped my book reach more people and made them more invested in the book.”

New Degree Press facilitates this pre-sale publishing model by helping authors activate their existing networks and circles first, finding that nearly every author has a much larger sphere of influence than they realize.

“We’ve published more than 800 authors and had three national book award winners or finalists just this year — and all of the authors own their books completely which is highly unusual in the traditional book publishing industry,” offered Bies. “But it’s core to our philosophy of the author as the creator and owner of their work. And much of that is due to the integration of audience building through a pre-sale campaign directly into the book publishing process.”

Shane Mac has seen firsthand the power of this approach serving as the chairman of New Degree Press’ publishing advisory board.  He credits the team’s adoption of techniques from startups and technology into a very traditional industry.

“Books have been developed and published the same way for a very long time,” admits Mac.  “But we know that tomorrow’s authors see themselves as brands and a publishing approach that takes this into account is not only innovative, but it’s the future.

New Degree Press is a certified hybrid publisher from the International Book Publishing Association (IBPA) headquartered in Maryland but operating and publishing internationally.  The organization is a social venture having applied to be a certified B-corporation (benefit corporation) in 2020.

For Bianchi this has meant seventeen boxes of books showed up on her front steps to be signed and mailed to her 700+ backers of her pre-sale campaign who not only helped fund the book’s production but also were critical to its early success.

“Small Brave Moves is all of our book.”

New Degree Press hold open submissions three times per year and encourages any author regardless of audience size or stage of writing to submit a draft manuscript for feedback.  While less than 20% of first-time authors who submit are directly approved to publish, the publisher offers an author accelerator program through its partner Creator Institute [www.Creator.Institute] to help authors in need of editorial and coaching support to get a publishable draft completed.

For more information, visit www.NewDegreePress.com