Neither publisher nor agent invest in the author per se, they don’t say “Right, here’s enough money to live off, to hire in required talent, to build a business”. Instead they stay within their silos, doing their thing pretty much as it has always been done. Entrepreneurial authors who want to create a business around their writing are thus left to self-publish whilst in traditional publishing, income streams that could help support publishers, agents and authors alike are left unexplored.

What would happen if publishers acted more like VCs or angel investors and treated authors more like a business? I know that might sound like crazy talk, but bear with me.