Tapping help at hand has long been a strength of independent publishers. Whether you’re set up as an author-publisher, an author services company, or a traditional publishing firm, it’s important to be strategic about your workforce, be it freelancers working under contract, employees on your payroll, or interns learning the ropes with your company. As you make changes to your hiring practices, it pays to be strategic and consider trends such as remote workspaces and the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Freelance or Payroll? 

Many factors contribute to how a publisher balances their workforce to meet their company’s needs. By hiring freelancers—independent contractors whose compensation is reported on IRS Form 1099—publishers enjoy flexibility, but they may also find they can’t get the help they need in a timely manner.

With payroll employees—for tax purposes, their compensation is reported on Form W-2—publishers have a steady workforce that can help with leveling up their business. But payroll obligations can feel onerous, especially in an industry where cash flow isn’t always predictable.

As an author-publisher and CEO of the author services company Write | Publish | Sell, Alexa Bigwarfe relies entirely on independent contractors to handle everything from administration to cover design and social media. “The upside is that I don’t have to have them on payroll and contribute into benefits, and they are available for hourly work and [on a] project-by-project basis,” Bigwarfe says.

Since freelancers have other clients, coordinating deadlines can be tricky. But since most of Bigwarfe’s team has been with her for some time, she is generally able to secure their services when she needs them. “I researched adding official part- and full-time employees,” she says. “But the benefits piece is overwhelming. Additionally, since the business is in flux in terms of revenue each month, it is scary to have someone who relies on you for their monthly income, especially if we have months that dip down into a revenue position in which I’d have to cut hours.”

Supplementing her staff of four full-time employees, CEO Alexandria Brown of Rising Action Publishing relies on eight freelancers. “Honestly, it’s a cost-savings measurement,” she says. “We want to have more people on staff in the near future, but the freelancers come with little overhead, and it is easy to pay their rate.” Despite their other gigs, Brown’s freelancers have been able to meet the occasional quick turnaround times, and she appreciates the “wide variety of experiences” they bring to her workforce.

Though the cost is greater, Brown appreciates the administrative, editorial, and marketing staff she has on payroll. “They work only for us, so they have the time to metaphorically buy into the company’s vision and time,” she says. “They can focus on what we’re trying to build instead of having to change their mindset on each project.”

At the author services company Book Launchers, Julie Broad relies on dozens of freelancers. “They give us flexibility of skill set [and] the ability to expand and contract the team as the work waves come and go,” she says. “The downside is that we can’t always get them on our schedule, processes don’t always align, and occasionally it can be challenging to find the talent when you need it.”

To manage the work done by these independent contractors, Broad has 14 part-time employees on payroll. Some of these employees came up through the freelance pipeline. “Working with someone on contract first is a great way to learn about them, and they can learn about you,” she says. “When they love the company and act like an employee and produce results as good or better than anyone we’ve worked with, we bring them in-house.”

Other sources she taps when hiring are referrals, the job search service Indeed, the Publishers Weekly job board, and the company’s existing team. “The downside is overhead, which can be stressful as revenue ebbs and flows,” she says. “But the upside is a team that works together cohesively, owns the process of the company, and can grow the company from within.”

With consideration to IRS distinctions, publishers have their own preferences about hiring freelancers versus payroll employees for particular tasks. In addition to three “almost full-time” employees, Warren Publishing owner Mindy Kuhn likes using freelancers for editorial work. Because editorial freelancers tend to specialize by genre, she thinks it makes good financial sense to pull them in for projects that match their specialties.

On the other hand, CEO Kim Wells Eley of KWE Publishing says she needs full-time editors to keep up with demand. She also has a part-time marketing person on payroll. “I found all of them through referrals from people in my network and publishing mastermind groups,” she says. Though she says having these positions on payroll is “wonderful,” she is also mindful of the ebb and flow of work. “As our sales generator, I stay busy making sure my team stays busy,” she says.

Interns for the Win

Publishing internships can have a big upside for both publishers and the students they hire. If the internship is unpaid, there is little financial impact, and interns get valuable experience in the industry.

“An intern’s role is to get a general introduction to publishing, which they get from working on a variety of efforts,” says Arthur A. Levine, president at Levine Querido. “We look for people from historically underrepresented backgrounds, whom we find from teachers, other interns, and ads.”

Levine sees no downside to using interns. “Our current executive editor and our current associate editor both began their careers as interns,” he says. Kuhn uses between three and five interns at Warren Publishing every semester, including summers. “My editor-in-chief uses an intern as an editorial assistant to review submissions and assist her in writing decline letters,” she says. “She assigns the other interns to marketing tasks such as creating social media posts and making calls to bookstores.”

Despite the time involved with training interns, Kuhn appreciates the opportunity to test-drive talented workers, such as the intern who went on to become an editorial assistant and is now the company’s managing editor. “We needed another team member in-house who could help in a variety of ways, and the person we hired was bright and eager and able to learn and fit our needs well,” she says.

Bigwarfe points to a service called Handshake that connects employers with potential interns. Still, she says she has found her most promising interns through personal connections. Eley has had a similar experience, hiring two unpaid marketing interns through personal connections. She has also tapped the services of Indeed, where she found a podcast tech intern who was such a “wonderful fit” that Eley now contracts with her as a freelancer.

Strategic Hiring

In a publisher’s strategic planning process, workforce decisions are critical. “As you plan to publish more books, you need to plan to increase the workforce to maintain the quality of your work, the attentiveness to what the author needs to grow—including editorial support, as well as marketing and publicity—and for the books to stand out,” Levine says. “This is particularly important for smaller indie publishers, whose main argument to authors at large corporations is our ability to treat them better than as one of hundreds or thousands.”

At the same time, no one wants to overextend. “For small companies, the choice to bring on a full- or part-time employee is largely driven by annual revenue and whether or not it’s sustainable,” Bigwarfe says. “I know that I could probably grow faster if I had a full-time employee, but due to the costs of running a publishing house, I would need to generate substantially more revenue to feel secure in being responsible for a salary for an additional person and for covering their benefits.”

Bigwarfe would like to bring on a director of operations, but she’s wary of making the commitment at this juncture. “Hiring traditionally can be a long and painful process, whereas bringing on 1099 employees can be much faster without as much red tape,” she says. “And there are a lot of really talented freelancers who have been great to work with.”

At KWE, Eley concedes that paying employment taxes was a bit of a shock when she first transitioned positions from freelancers to payroll employees. But as she considered the amount of work KWE was handling and the history those freelancers had with the company, the switch made sense. In workforce decisions, she also considers client feedback, weighing the risk of a payroll obligation over potentially losing clients due to inadequate support.

When considering workforce changes, publishers need to consider both tangible and intangible costs. “The risk is always whether the business can sustain the overhead,” Broad says. “But we know it’s time to hire in-house when we know the team is maxed out or the contractor expenses are higher than it would cost to have that skill in-house.”

Brown agrees that publishers need to be mindful of stretching their workforce too thin. “We do business planning every quarter to ensure we’re on our growth point and make sure we’re not overworking anyone,” she says. “We also make sure we have the people in place needed for each title so the title also gets the attention it deserves.”

Financial forecasting is vital to workforce planning, Brown says. “Many times in this industry, accounts receivable don’t match with accounts payable, so a small business line of credit to ensure that your payroll runs smoothly is a very good idea,” she says.

As growth in her publishing program warrants more payroll employees, Brown makes sure she can afford to pay competitive salaries. “We want to ensure all our pay rates are aligned with the market value of the position, so we don’t undercut anyone,” she says.

Workforce Trends

Workforce trends may also affect a publisher’s hiring decisions. Employment figures, remote work, and the potential impact of AI are among the trends publishers are considering as they make workforce adjustments. With unemployment numbers hitting historic lows, the challenge of finding and retaining a talented workforce has increased. As Levine points out, filling positions in publishing can be especially difficult. “Entry-level jobs are frequently disappointing to bright, talented, motivated college students,” he says. “The sad truth is that it’s hard to live through those early years until you’ve gained the salary increases and job satisfaction that makes you want to stay.”

On the plus side, technology and work-at-home experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic have led to increased workplace flexibility. “With the work we do the most, including editing, formatting, and account setup, we don’t need to be in person,” Eley says. “In fact, our newest employee, our part-time marketing person, lives about nine hours away. Our cover designer, who works freelance with us, lives in another country.”

Likewise, Bigwarfe says her team spans the distance from California to Ireland. “We’ve been able to make it work really well using project management tools and communication tools like Teamwork and Slack,” she says. Remote workspaces pair well with flexible working hours, something Brown appreciates. “I like to live on flexible working hours, so I don’t expect a normal nine-to-
five,” she says. “As long as the work’s being done in the timeline we need it, then I’m good.”

At the same time, Broad points to the tax-related challenges of payroll employees who work in different states. “Every state requires a setup,” she says. “It’s a bit of a nightmare. It also impacts the health benefits we can offer because we don’t have any state with more than two employees.”

The full impact of AI on the publishing workforce remains to be seen. “If anything, I hope it frees up individuals in marketing and publicity to spend more of their brainpower on what can’t be automated,” Levine says.

Toward that end, Broad says she has replaced four copywriting contractors with an internal AI specialist. In contrast, Brown is not planning to replace any human workers with AI. “We love the people we work with and do not want to see them out of work,” she says.

The Right People

While trends come and go, Broad points out that workforce decisions always involve building a team that meshes well with a company’s mission and values. “Take your time hiring,” she says. “Get the culture fit right and the attitude right. It’s much easier to train skills than it is to train the right culture fit.”

Freelance or payroll. Expand or pull back. Embrace a trend or stick with the tried-and-true. As with other aspects of the business, successful publishers weigh their workforce options, balancing risks and benefits in their hiring decisions. Relying on the mix of freelancers, payroll employees, and interns appropriate for their circumstances, they position themselves for growth and success.

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