Subsidy Publishing - 4th portion of the 4 Types of Publishing series by Jo A. Wilkins

A subsidy publisher is a publisher that acts like a commercial publisher. They do produce books and go through most of the steps of a commercial publisher. However, even though they put manuscripts under contract, they do not print them unless they get their authors to pay for the cost of publication. They usually hide this criteria under the guise of having the author purchase a certain number of books before production. This usually amounts to 1000 to 2500 books.

With the exception of certain types of publishers such as university or scholarly presses, any publisher that requests a fee from the author is a subsidy publisher. These types of publishers are, in most respects exactly like the commercial publisher. In most cases, the authors are the only ones who know they are paying to have their books produced. As with commercial publishers, the books are owned by the publisher and remain in the publisher's possession and authors receive royalties on the books sold.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3