For many years now, celebrities (Gwyneth Paltrow, Oprah Winfrey, Johnny Depp, Sarah Jessica Parker, to name a few) have been tapped to headline imprints at big publishing houses. Now it seems that brand-name, bestselling authors are becoming popular choices.
Within the last couple years, we’ve seen Roxane Gay launch her own imprint with Grove Atlantic and Nicola and David Yoon establish a YA romance imprint at Random House. And just in our last issue, we mentioned the launch of Zibby Books, an independent publisher that’s using “book champions” to mentor authors from inception to publication. Participating champions so far include Elin Hilderbrand, Emily Giffin, and Dani Shapiro, among others.
Now, Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) and Lena Waithe (screenwriter and producer) will become publishers of their own imprints at Zando, another independent house, which will release its first titles in 2022. In a model not dissimilar to that of Zibby Books, the authors involved stand to earn a revenue share from successful books and will participate in the entire publication process, including marketing and promotion.
Gillian Flynn Books will publish both fiction and nonfiction; Flynn is interested particularly in psychological thrillers and science fiction and would love to find a western from a woman’s point of view. Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Books will feature underrepresented voices across all genres.
Meanwhile: Novelist Sara Gran has launched a publishing company, Dreamland Books, which will start by publishing Gran’s The Book of the Most Precious Substance. According to the press release, “Dreamland Books was born both out of Gran’s life-long love of books (and years of working with them as an author, collector, retail bookseller, and rare-book dealer) and her frustration with the increasingly corporate culture of the new, mega-conglomerate publishing houses. The goals of the press are both creative—to publish extraordinary books—and practical—to have more control over her own work, ensure it stays in print, and give other writers the same option for more creative and financial ownership of their work.” Dreamland Books is not open to submissions.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
