Just do it. Lower your expectations to completely nothing.
At this point, my expectations are nothing for everything I write:) I've already self-published a book in the same genre so the author name is not an issue to me. It's just that the book needs to be edited. By me. I re-read most of it after posting this and I still think its good! but I realized my characters repeat themselves a lot. It'll take time to fix that I'm not sure I have right now. It would, however, be satisfying to put it out there. Hopefully I will work up the gumption to finish it, (eventually). It's all that tedious stuff that inevitably comes at the end of a project that's holding me back.
If you had an idea and weren't sure whether to flesh it out or not, this would be a different conversation. But the book is already finished. If you have confidence in it, put it out there. Even if it sells little, since you've already put in the time, you've lost nothing by hitting publish. In fact, it seems a waste not to.
Some of my titles sell very little, but I don't regret publishing any of them.
On a separate note, (for the benefit of people seeking publishing from a small press)I wouldn't describe Red Adept as a hybrid. They offer editing services for self-published authors, but they also have a wall between that and their publishing. Novels authors have paid RAP to edit can't be submitted to them for publishing. Novels they've rejected can't be submitted to their editing service. Anyone who tries to keep those functions that separate is a regular trad publisher.
It's true they expect authors to do some work publicizing. That's true of a lot of trads these days.
I don't know anything else about RAP, but their website is presented professionally, and they have a lot of books that seem to have done well, based on a few spot checks. I'm not sure I will submit, but the initial glance made me want to.
That's interesting. I thought of hybrid as a catch-all term (I don't follow the industry very closely). They only do e-books, not paperbacks, which would set them apart from a trad publisher.
The term
hybrid doesn't really have a standard definition. Some "publishers" that call themselves hybrids are actually vanity presses by another name, which has made
hybrid a somewhat suspect label. In the interest of clarity, I would define a true hybrid as being a publisher that in some way combines features of self-publishing and traditional publishing. When that means authors have more of a real voice and higher royalties, it's good. If it means authors pay for things traditional publishers normally pay for, but the publisher still takes a typical chunk of the income (essentially for doing nothing), it's very, very bad.
I don't remember the name, but I did run across a hybrid a few years ago that seemed like an equitable arrangement. It was started by an author as was a little like an authors' cooperative--under ideal conditions, it was full royalty pass-through. For instance, authors got 70% of the royalty on Amazon ebooks, just as if they had self published them. However, the publisher didn't take all comers, and if a book was promising but needed work, then the author had a choice--take a lower royalty (I think 50%) for a period of time to compensate for the needed editing, or pay for editing and take the full 70%. While that would make some people suspicious, and the system could certainly be exploited by an unscrupulous publisher, in this case it seemed like an equitable balance. (The editing wasn't intended to make the publisher money at the expense of authors but to be cost-neutral.) And the publisher provided some promotion, as well as setting up copromotion opportunities for its authors, who also got the benefit of having an imprint label rather than being self-published (for those who wanted that).
Booktrope, sometimes called a hybrid, involved creating books in a team approach. That is, an author might work with an editor, a cover designer, and a publicist, all of which were independent of the publisher. The team made an agreement about how the royalties would be split. The team might be smaller if, for example, the author was also a graphic designer and also did the cover. The publisher took I think 20% and handled payments, facilitated collaboration, and did some advertising. I guess the model didn't pan out, because the company went out of business.
Anyway, Red Adept pays all production expenses as a trad would and gives the author 50% ebook royalties (higher than most publishers), as well as doing some advertising. As far as only producing ebooks is concerned, it appears to me they start with ebooks and then goes where demand takes them. Some of their titles have paperbacks, and some even had audiobooks. I just checked one of the titles, and Red Adept is listed as the publisher of all three formats. Even if they were ebook exclusive, though, I'd say that makes them atypical but not hybrid. (Most indies produce paperbacks, and a lot produce audiobooks, so being an ebook-only operation doesn't suggest a combination of trad and self publishing features.)