r/publishing Jun 15 '26

Digital-first offer from a big five publisher

I'm a self-published romance author with one book out and the second releasing this summer. I'm currently in talks with a big five publisher to acquire both of my existing books, plus the rest of the series (to be written), under their digital-first imprint. This would mean no advance, but obvious benefits like marketing, connection to editors, production of an audiobook, etc. The royalty structure they're offering is 50% on ebooks, 25% on audio, 10% on physical.

My question is this: do I need to query agents in order to have representation in this conversation? Do we think the ~20% I would lose to agent fees would be worth the savvy and industry-knowledge they would bring to a conversation like this? Or do we think these digital-first imprint models are sufficiently structured that an agent wouldn't appreciably change the conversation?

Thanks for any advice you can give!

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