Madeline McIntosh on Authors Equity Success in 2025
By Linda Secondari, Studiolo Secondari
Last night I attended a publishing industry event presented by New York Book Forum and Westchester Publishing Services and hosted by Macmillan Publishers. The featured speaker was Madeline McIntosh, CEO and Publisher of Authors Equity, who spoke candidly about the success of the young publishing house and the fundamental ways it departs from traditional publishing models.
McIntosh contrasted Authors Equity’s approach with conventional trade publishing, which typically relies on author advances, author royalties capped in the 10–20% range, large in-house staffs, siloed departments, and limited author participation in key decisions. Authors Equity rejects that structure. Instead, it operates on a profit-sharing model, giving authors the bulk of a book’s revenue and full visibility into its finances. Profit and loss statements are shared openly with authors and collaborators, and decisions are made through collective evaluation of costs, value, and impact.
Authors Equity has already produced three New York Times bestsellers in 2025, including Joseph Nguyen’s Don’t Believe Everything You Think (for which Studiolo Secondari did the text design) , and Seth Godin’s This is Strategy. The company appears well positioned for 2026, with a forthcoming Seth Godin title slated for a rapid, market-responsive release.
McIntosh emphasized that Authors Equity is intentionally lean. The core staff is kept small, while the company works with a broad network of contractors and freelancers across design, editorial, and production. This model, she argued, allows access to a virtually unlimited pool of specialized talent and enables the house to publish across genres by leveraging external expertise.
Publishing is, by nature, a traditional business, reticent to change, which makes it especially energizing to see a fundamentally different approach succeed. McIntosh acknowledged that growth will present challenges, particularly because some of Authors Equity’s current advantages stem from its lack of legacy agreements and institutional drag. Still, the model’s early success suggests a meaningful rethinking of how value, transparency, and collaboration can operate in contemporary publishing.
I left the event genuinely excited to see what the future holds for Authors Equity.
The New York Book Forum has a great line up of events scheduled for this year. I highly recommend checking them out if you are interested in the business of publishing. https://newyorkbookforum.org/event-calendar/