We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Holly Kammier. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Holly below.

Holly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

One of the things we are most proud of is that we are the ONLY hybrid publishing company to offer authors a path to keep ALL of their rights and ALL of their profits. Because Jessica Therrien and I started Acorn Publishing to publish our own books, we made it a priority to give each of our authors the same benefits that were most important to us when we established our imprint; full rights, full profits, and beautifully finished books that rival any of those books sitting on the shelves at Barnes & Noble.

Also unique; ALL of our authors are offered a Barnes & Noble book signing and are invited to join us at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the largest book festival in the United States. Something else we are incredibly proud of is our partnerships with television and film agents as well as overseas traditional publishing houses. So far one of Acorn Publishing’s books has been turned into a documentary film, another is being adapted for a television series, and we have secured traditional publishing contracts on behalf of our Acorns across Europe. Helping our writers achieve their dream of seeing their stories on-screen and printed in a foreign language is beyond exciting!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Absolutely. Acorn Publishing grew out of my co-founder’s and my frustrating experiences with the book business.

As a former journalist with a background in publicity, I became disillusioned early on in my quest for publication when a traditional publisher expressed interest in my memoir but only if I changed it into something that didn’t feel true.

Meanwhile, my best-friend Jessica Therrien had seen great success with Oppression, the first book in her young adult fantasy series, Children of the Gods. But when her publisher mislabeled the second book’s genre, fans couldn’t find it, and sales suffered. Jessica hired an attorney and got her rights back.

Then we pooled our hard-won wisdom and started a “fake” imprint to publish our own books. My son suggested the name Acorn Publishing, and we loved the concept, “from the tiny acorn … grows the mighty oak.”

That was our beginning!

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

It happened very organically. It’s just about every writer’s dream to get that traditional publishing deal with a big publisher. Unfortunately, the publishing industry has changed dramatically in the past decade and if you don’t have a huge platform, your chances of getting a “Big 5” deal are slim.

It’s part of the reason we started our “fake” company. Much to our delight, Acorn Publishing’s first releases, my juicy 2015 novel Kingston Court and all three of Jessica’s Children of the Gods novels, did extremely well. Kingston Court hit the Barnes and Noble top 50 list for all fiction. Jessica’s series hit number 3 on the Barnes & Noble teen bestseller list, just behind The Hunger Games.

We realized if we could create this kind of success for ourselves, we might be able to create a real company by doing the same for others. To test the waters, we took on a couple more authors. Alyssa Petersel’s award-winning memoir, Somehow I Am Different was named Indie Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, and The Fourth Element trilogy from prolific fantasy writer, Kat Ross, did extraordinarily well.

That’s when we knew we were on to something.

Eight years later, we are getting ready to release our 150th outstanding book under our imprint. Working with a passionate, accomplished staff of industry experts, we are proud that Acorn Publishing has made so many talented writers’ dream of publication come true.

Any advice for managing a team?

My advice is to hire people you like, admire, and trust, and listen to them. We try to explain why we make the decisions we make and why we are choosing to do things the way we do with our team so that everyone buys into the process. Nobody wants to do things just because they were told to do it. People respond better when they know the “why”. We also ask our team members if they have questions or suggestions. If their suggestions are feasible and worthwhile, we implement them. We stay open to doing things better and work as a collective rather than from a top-down management style. For us, this strategy has created a creative, thriving, and joyful work environment.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.acornpublishingllc.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/acornpublishing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AcornPublishingLLC
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/19156963/admin/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ACORNPUBLISHINGLLC