One of the most talked-about industry success stories in recent years is Sourcebooks. In November 2025, Publishers Marketplace reported that, based on print units sold, Sourcebooks is now the fifth-largest publisher in the US (sub required). CEO Dominique Raccah said at the time that Sourcebooks was ranking number three in adult fiction print sales.
What’s driving that success? As the article points out, “Many of their biggest sellers are the print editions of formerly self-published authors who maintained the ebook rights.” In 2024, I also profiled Sourcebooks, specifically the Bloom Books imprint, which launched in 2021 with EL James. While that profile, among many others, indicates that Sourcebooks has uniquely innovated in marketing, promotion, and publicity, such outstanding success is bound to create competition around a business model driven by signing successful self-publishing authors in commercial categories like romance and romantasy.
Publishing deals for self-published authors have grown significantly between 2024 and 2025. I manually counted 2024 and 2025 deals in Publishers Marketplace, looking specifically for the keywords self-published and indie. The deals could be for rights to existing work, for new work, or for a mix. I found 49 such deals in 2024 and 93 deals in 2025. More than half of these deals involve romance and romantasy, followed by other types of commercial fiction. Nearly all deals involve rights to existing work—that is where the overwhelming interest lies.
Important note: There are far more deals involving self-published authors that do not mention in the deal announcement that the books have been self-published. An example: Jessica Peterson, signed to a five-book deal by Bloom Books in 2025 for the Lucky River Ranch series. The only way to know about the series’ self-publishing history is to look up the ebook’s publication date at a retailer. The following analysis assumes that it’s possible to extrapolate larger trends from those deals where the self-publishing history is clearly identified.
Agent Kimberly Brower of Park, Fine & Brower, who has been striking these deals for years now, wrote to me via email that “it’s about time” publishers paid more attention to self-published authors and books. “They are watching these authors launch their books on their own, many to much success, so instead of ignoring, they are joining in and recognizing that these self-publishing books are ones readers want to read.” However, she added, “I do think the rise of BookTok has allowed publishers to more effectively find self-published authors.”
The number of publishers involved in these deals has grown and become more diverse. In 2024, there were a few dozen publishers signing self-published authors; notable players aside from Sourcebooks were Harlequin, Zando’s Slowburn, Hachette’s Forever, and PRH’s Ace and Berkley. More major houses are reflected in 2025, including Hachette’s Requited, Simon & Schuster’s Scarlett Press, and St. Martin’s Saturday Books (Macmillan).
- Hachette launched Requited in 2025, aimed specifically at the crossover market for YA and new adult. It signed Caty Rogan’s Kissed by the Gods (Eternal Wars) in a major three-book deal, in a pre-empt, for publication in June 2026; it also signed Sable Sorenson’s Dire Bound (Wolves of Ruin) in a major deal for seven figures in a pre-empt.
- Simon & Schuster launched Scarlett Press in 2025 as a crossover romance imprint. It signed Tiffany Hunt’s The Dark Lord’s Guide to Dating (and Other War Crimes) (Guides to Villainy & Love) in a major three-book deal, in a pre-empt, for publication this spring; it also signed Gretchen Powell Fox’s Shattered Crown trilogy in a six-figure, three-book deal, in a pre-empt. In January 2026, it signed Marion Blackwood’s Flame and Thorns series in a five-book deal. (I would be remiss if I didn’t also note Simon & Schuster launched the Maverick audiobook imprint in 2025, a digital-first effort that competes against Podium, among others, for successful self-publishing authors.)
- St. Martin’s Saturday Books launched in 2024. In 2025, it signed Rachel Schneider’s Metal Slinger (Fire & Metal) in a three-book major deal for seven figures at auction.
Bloom Books remains a top dealmaker and reported 24 deals in 2025 alone; almost all fall into romance/romantasy. When I asked agent Brent Taylor of Triada US if other publishers have been inspired by Bloom Books’ well-reported success or if this deal activity remains quite narrow in scope, he wrote me, “A little bit of both. Some publishers are now being more flexible in doing print-only deals; I believe it is because they have seen how successful Bloom has been and that they are missing out. At the same time, not every publisher has fully embraced print-only deals, so the options are definitely more limited. When I am making a submission list for a print-only project, I don’t have as many options as I do for a book where the author is willing to sell full volume rights.”
Regardless, these deals have a sweeping and competitive nature to them—they’re not merely one-book deals. I’m seeing auctions and pre-empts and multiple-book deals for six and seven figures, as the examples above show. Some publishers are creating imprints, as Sourcebooks did, to specialize in publishing this indie-born content. Self-publishing authors who want to increase the likelihood of striking these deals may want to focus a series in a subgenre. Areas of significant deal activity in romance include the Omegaverse, dark romance/mafia, why choose and reverse harem, and monster romance. Taylor said that an author who “does a ton of online marketing” is more likely to receive enthusiastic interest from multiple publishers.
Brower said overall there is less hesitancy today from publishers in striking significant deals with indie authors. “I think publishers realize it’s not always just about one book, but the author brand. Publishers have been smart in betting on an author and going all in on their backlist and front list.” Taylor agrees. “It shows that the publisher understands that it’s a career-building opportunity for the author. Indie authors tend to have deep backlists, and they tend to release their frontlist titles more frequently than traditional publishing authors. The multi-book deals are reflective of the indie publishing industry where authors put out more books on a faster timeline, because their readers love it and can’t get enough.”
While I like to see this kind of collaboration and partnership between authors and publishers—where both sides have something to gain in working together—I do hear concern from authors who are not able to fuel their own success, especially outside of commercial fiction. Will publishers become less likely to take a chance on an author who’s unable to find readers on their own and demonstrate market demand? While Brower thinks doors are opening right now for self-published authors, she adds, “A crowded market leaves less and less room for new voices and creates a bigger barrier to entry for debut authors.”
Taylor says, “You could look at it as really unfair to debut authors that the publishing industry is evolving in this way where publishers can just make ‘easy money’ by snapping up proven bestsellers. … But is it not just a fact of life that every industry in history always changes and evolves? In some ways it is disappointing, but you could also look at it as an exciting time for publishing to be doing things differently. I feel really inspired by how indie authors have used their own marketing strategies to successfully launch their books, and I am hoping that the big publishers pay attention, learn, and adapt so that they can more thoughtfully and successfully publish all of their books.”
Bottom line: When I first started working in publishing, it was commonplace for agents to say that self-publishing your work would kill your chances at a traditional publishing deal later. In fact, it was repeated so often (and still is, in some corners), I continue to field questions about it from authors. In every class related to getting published, someone still asks if self-publishing or posting and distributing their work in some online venue won’t kill their chances at a traditional book deal. No, it won’t. If an agent or publisher sees money to be made, they are most likely to come and solicit you. However, publishers have limited or no interest in self-published work that hasn’t found its audience and appears to be languishing in the marketplace. Remember that the most meaningful deals are for series and for authors who produce a significant volume of work in desirable categories and demonstrate market momentum.
Indie authors are here to stay as an established and still-growing category of proven sellers that publishers with deep pockets will chase after alongside celebrities, politicians, influencers, media personalities, Supreme Court justices, and Nobel Prize laureates. Case in point: Don’t miss the announcement of Pellerin Books, a new UK fiction publisher, noted just below.
Further reading
- How Bloom Books Partners with Self-Published Authors for Bestselling Success (February 2024)
- The Self-Publishing Scene Includes Agents All Around (September 2024)
- Using Data to Drive Acquisitions: Why Podium Bought Bookstat (August 2022)
Readers respond
I heard from Victoria Gerken, publisher at Podium Entertainment, which has long worked with self-publishing authors. (I last profiled Podium in 2021.) She noted specifically the disruption of rights acquisition driven by the success of self-published authors: “Even a few years ago we were hearing publishers tell agents ‘no audio, no deal’—well that’s been interrupted by the fact that many successful authors already have audio on the market, so if a traditional publisher wants to make a deal, they need to forget the mandate.
“The other interesting factor is that authors hold more of the cards—we are serving these entrepreneurs by doing hybrid deals for audio and print while they continue to publish the ebook format. We recognize they are maximizing value in that format, so why do we try to take it from them when they are doing a great job? We just published Sloane St James’s Of Ink & Alchemy in audio and print, which is a great example of this model. We simultaneously released the title with a beautiful sprayed-edge print edition sold into Walmart and all other retailers, which she wouldn’t be able to do on her own, and the audio edition, which hit the top 100 on Audible last week. Meanwhile, Sloane controls the ebook. So she is having her cake and eating it.”
Meanwhile, I noticed UK’s Bookseller is writing more avidly this month about independent authors being picked up by traditional publishers. They note the difficulty of identifying such authors but take a close look at a well-known one: the Coco Wyo coloring books that were originally self-published by a Vietnamese collective and picked up by Penguin Random House. Thriller novelist LJ Ross is another author who has moved to PRH for her 37 backlist titles and 12 frontlist titles yet to be published. Read more. The Bookseller has a separate article on the science fiction and fantasy space, in which the publisher at Tor says readers “are becoming the new gatekeepers.” Read. (Both articles may require a subscription.)
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.
