Here's What It's Like Working for an Indie Publisher vs. a Big Five

From the POV of someone who recently switched jobs between the two.

Last month, I started a new chapter (pun intended) that I’ve been dreaming about since high school: working at a Big Five publishing house.

Previously, I was working at a book publicity and marketing agency that specifically partnered with independent authors and publishers. Most of our clients were either self-published/hybrid published or had been told by their traditional publisher that publicity wasn’t in the budget.

Right away, you might imagine that the two roles involved a lot of change. In some ways, that’s right. In others, not so much.

Since a portion of my subscribers are interested in working in publishing, I thought it would be worthwhile to help them understand the differences in the companies out there to help them find their perfect fit.

Disclaimer: I am in no way claiming indie publishers or the Big Five publishers are better than the other. These are just observations from my experience!

Photo by Araix Rand on Unsplash

A Quick Overview

Just in case you have never heard of “independent” publishing or have no idea what I mean by “Big Five,” let’s quickly break it down:

Indie Publishers:

Small to mid-sized publishing houses that operate independently of the large corporate groups.

A few common factors characterize how they work:

• Employees often juggle multiple roles, meaning there are fewer specialized departments within the houses

• They can often take bigger creative risks, without needing to convince an acquisitions panel about profitability

• Authors might have the chance to work directly with their publisher or editor instead of through a middle-man (agent)

• Marketing budgets and advances are usually smaller, but royalties can be higher percentages

The Big Five publishers:

Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan—the five largest trade publishers in the U.S.

A few common factors characterize how they work:

• They have extensive distribution networks and strong relationships with retailers, making it easier for books to land in big box stores and internationally

• Editors edit, publicists publicize, marketers market. You’ll have more people dedicated to each stage of the book’s journey

• Larger advances and marketing budgets are possible, but competition for those resources is fierce

• At the end of the day, most decisions come down to profits

Ok, so what’s the difference for employees?

In both roles, I am/was working as a publicist for lifestyle nonfiction books; the job descriptions are pretty directly comparable. But there are a few things that immediately stuck out as different.

Here’s what I’ve noticed so far:

1. There’s so much more red tape at a Big Five

Anyone who’s switched from a smaller company to a corporate behemoth will get this one. At an indie publisher, half the time you just need to run something by a single supervisor for approval.

At a Big Five? You might need sign-off from your supervisor, their manager, the sales team, HR, and apply for a budget. It’s a whole process.

2. Brand power opens doors

As a publicist, getting people to open my emails is, like, 90% of my job. As it turns out, having a Penguin Random House email domain has improved my “open” rate exponentially (we’re talking 20% → 50%).

Even when journalists aren’t interested in my pitch, I now get polite replies like, “Not this time, but please reach out in the future.” That almost never happened when I was at an indie—half the time, journalists wouldn’t take the time of day to read your subject line, much less type a nice rejection email.

3. AI policies are very different

In my experience, the way that indie publishers and Big Five publishers treat AI is hugely different. While working with indies, we were encouraged to use AI for every administrative task we could think of (but never, ever for anything creative). With so few employees running the whole operation, every bit of efficiency mattered.

In contrast, PRH has every AI model disabled on their company computers. You literally can’t even Google “Gemini” on company computers without hitting a firewall. The only AI tool available is a dramatically stripped-down version of ChatGPT that struggles with basic commands (think AI circa 2023). Bigger publishers are in the spotlight, so avoiding legal risks makes sense. And with hundreds of employees, they can afford to make people put in the extra elbow grease.

4. The one-size-fits-all approach vs tailored campaigns

When I worked at an indie, most publicity campaigns followed the same template: media, podcasts, and influencer outreach across the board. At PRH, there’s room to be much more strategic. With bigger teams and more resources, campaigns can be tailored to where each book has the best shot at success. For example:

• An author with 700K Instagram followers? Better to go heavy on social media and events.

• An author with no platform but major credentials? Focus on national media where they can weigh in as an expert.

• A trend-driven book? Build a campaign around the trend, not the author.

The result: my day-to-day is more varied, and I’m not stuck trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

5. The idea of “author care”

I only learned what “author care” is once I joined PRH. For all of you at home, “author care” is essentially going the extra mile to make an author feel supported, even when it doesn’t directly boost sales.

For instance, one of our authors wanted help setting up a small U.S. bookstore tour while visiting family from abroad. In her case (she was the author of a cookbook with a hyper-localized cuisine), we didn’t expect bookstore events to move the needle much for sales, but we still organized five talks and signings for her. Why? Because it makes her feel valued, which builds loyalty and keeps the door open for future books.

Indies often just don’t have the resources to do that kind of thing.

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Unsolicited Manuscript is an independently-run newsletter. All opinions are my own and do not reflect the views of my employer, company, or any other organization.