Founded by wealthy book influencer and podcaster Zibby Owens, Zibby Books will publish one book per month, focusing on fiction and memoir that’s targeted to book club readers. To market and promote its books, Zibby will call on its Book Champions, a group of bestselling and established authors who get an equity stake in the book and mentor the author from inception to publication. According to the site, these champions include authors such as Elin Hilderbrand, Emily Giffin, and Dani Shapiro.
Zibby Books is also creating a profit-sharing bonus program, where 75 percent of profits will be evenly split among every employee and the program’s authors. This profit bonus will be paid out during authors’ year of publication and their first year of backlist, “as well as any years during which their book has outsized sales results.” And finally, Zibby will also hire “book lovers and fans on a hyper-local level to serve as sales ambassadors with built-in financial incentives.” So if you love to recommend books and have a flair for sales, maybe there’s a money-making opportunity here for you as well. For important context on Zibby Owens, we suggest reading this Vulture profile from 2019.
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.
