The Other Kind of French Press, LLC, was founded in June 2023 for the main purpose of publishing Swanson’s French in its two additions (adult and high school), as well as several other books that needed it. The term “self-publishing” still has a negative connotation in some quarters (although it is improving daily, maybe even hourly). Even worse, though, is the other common term, “vanity press.” Our theory was that if what would otherwise be a self-published book was published by an actual publishing company or small press, then it would automatically lose its unfortunate “self-publishing” and “vanity” labels.

(And as people knowledgeable about the publishing industry are learning – again on a daily basis – the publishing industry has itself been undergoing some massive changes over the past decade. The number of “big” mainstream publishers has shrunk to the point where we now have only the Big Five.” [1]) Yes, there are dozens of “smaller” imprints. But for example, Random House has these famous imprints under its umbrella: Bantam, Rand House Children’s Books, Ballantine, Del Rey Books, Dell Publishing, Schocken Books, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (itself a conglomerate including Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, Vintage Books, Pantheon, Anchor Books, Nan A. Talese Books, etc.), Bantam Spectra, David McKay Publications, the entire Penguin Group– a staggering total of some 300 imprints.

Whether you want to think about these as the Big Five, Big Four, or as some dozens of their major imprints that are still household names is up to you. What they all have in common is that they are BIG, very hard to get published by, are (properly) concerned with making profits for their stockholders, and virtually REQUIRE writer access through the several thousand literary agents (who are nearly impossible to get picked up by). The point is, “big” publishing is pretty much a “closed” profit-making industry – and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a fundamental aspect of capitalism. The trouble is there are hundreds of thousands – maybe millions, who knows – of people who write books that will just never in a thousand years get picked up and published by the major houses. The actual quality of those books is all over the map, from “pretty good” and “pretty good but needs a little work,” to downright illiterate and awful. In many cases, no one really cares – and they shouldn’t. The quality of the book may well be irrelevant, and many times the author knows in his/her/their heart that his/her/their book isn’t going to knock John Grisham off the bestseller list.

A new category of publishing has come along, called “hybrid publishing” and hybrid presses. We are NOT a hybrid publishing company. The hybrids split the cost of publishing with the author, and often the author has to pay up front for the publishing often thousands of dollars. Instead, the Other Kind of French Press is what is called a “PID” press – a print-on-demand press that uses Amazon KDP to print on demand, like the name says. Amazon KDP is free to set up and publish a book, and it makes money only after a book is sold. So, let’s assume your book is being printed and Other French Press has agreed with the author to retail it for $20 (we’re going to use whole, round numbers instead of messing around with prices like $19.95). Amazon’s cost (charge) to print is, say, $6.00. So someone orders your book from Amazon, and Amazon sells it “at retail” for $20 (plus shipping, not our problem). It keeps $6.00 for its costs and typically 30% of retail price (another $6) for its profit. Fine and dandy, and it leaves $8 for you, the author.

The other major thing about the Other Kind of French Press is that we have no expectation of anything making a profit; our aim is only to break about even. If something makes some money, then great. The big advantage of print-on-demand is that we don’t have to print 500 or 1,00 copies, warehouse them, and sell them ourselves. Therefore, we don’t have any inventory or overhead. If you buy a book from Amazon or Ingram, then we might make a buck or two. If you don’t, well, we have no overhead costs to worry about, other than just keeping up our web site. Our goal is to get books published and “out there,” and not much more than that. Then it’s up to each author to do the marketing. We aren’t “self-publishing,” just self-marketing.