There are some good hybrid publishers, but most of them are perilously close to the definition of a ‘vanity press’ where you are paying for the pleasure of seeing your name on a book without the publisher being worried about whether it will sell or not.

Not all publishers are created equal. There are the traditional publishers including the so-called ‘Big Five’, hybrid-model and digital first publishers and self-publishers, also known as indie-authors or indie-publishers.

I really wanted to be a published novelist. I wanted it more than I feared failure and humiliation.

The report co-authors and owners of The Ripped Bodice, Leah and Bea Koch, said they were motivated to conduct the study ‘because they often found themselves short of options when customers come in looking for traditionally published books by authors of color’.