Two new publishing execs with MBA credentials and connections to Nashville are applying Wall Street–style best practices, testing new technology, and leveraging their networks to help break into the mainstream. This month, both have new deals for trade distribution through Simon & Schuster.
Joseph Quaderer, who earned his MBA at NYU's Stern School of Business and spent 17 years as a Morgan Stanley banker, has partnered with Nashville-based Forefront Books to establish Quaderer Books, an imprint offering select clients distribution through S&S. And Allison Trowbridge, who holds an MBA from Oxford, is expanding her Nashville-based Copper Books with a new S&S distribution agreement, with plans to publish a dozen titles annually and add two new imprints.
Quaderer expands after first year
When Quaderer founded Quaderer Media Group in New York City in November 2024, he said he and his partner, whose background was in computer science and engineering, had "one key advantage: we knew nothing about the [publishing] industry," he told PW. Their aim, he said, was to look at "what could be improved with technology and what outdated practices still lingered."
QMG now works with 60-70 clients with a core team of just two full-time employees—Quaderer and his CTO—plus one freelance writer working 30 hours weekly and a virtual assistant in the Philippines. The company contracts with over 80 ghostwriters, many of them recruited from the Gathering of the Ghosts conference in early 2024.
The company serves what Quaderer describes as "elite clientele," including CEOs, congresspeople, doctors, and retired professional athletes—"people with important stories who aren't yet household names, but have the potential to sell millions of copies," he said.
Among early clients are Scott Storkamp, chief investment officer at Morgens Waterfall hedge fund, who is completing a ghostwritten book on growth investing; Shveta Pillai, founder of LeadStyle, who is working on a ghostwritten anthology with former Time staff writer Jamie Ducharme; and Walter Green, former CEO of Harrison Conference Services, who collaborated with Quaderer on the illustrated novel The Gratitude Express, which Amplify Publishing Group will publish in January.
QMG offers authors four publishing paths: assisted self-publishing, print-on-demand under the QMG umbrella, traditional distribution through a Big Five distributor, and a co-investment model similar to Authors Equity. Quaderer challenges the economics of traditional publishing, which historically has relied on large print runs and significant upfront capital.
"That model still works for A-list authors," he said. "For everyone else, the picture is different." Print-on-demand, he argued, has eliminated upfront costs that once justified publishers taking most royalties and rights: "I almost feel like today for certain authors, traditional publishing is vanity publishing, because they're doing it not because it makes financial sense, not because they're going to control their IP or have an equitable split of the royalties, but for the vanity and ego."
The company is also opening an office in Sharjah Publishing City in the United Arab Emirates, where Quaderer sees untapped potential in using ghostwriters. "There's pretty much no companies doing this in the region," he said. "I think focusing on ghostwriting will get rid of a bottleneck, and you'll have more ministers, more business people, more politicians writing books."
QMG operates a proprietary AI system that handles metadata generation, BISAC codes, keywords, and social media copy, but draws a hard line against using AI for content creation. "We are for ethical use of AI," Quaderer said. "We do not use it for creating any content. When we do ghostwriting, it's a hard red line."
Copper scales up
Meanwhile, starting this month, Copper Books will distribute through S&S and expand to a dozen titles per year. Founded by Trowbridge in 2018, the company initially offered an app-based social media platform before expanding into publishing in 2022.
The first Copper title under the S&S agreement will be the children's book The Superpowers of You by Lynette Deschler. Forthcoming 2026 titles include Real Confidence by Simone Knego, The Lion is You by David Gerber, and Alchemy of Chaos by Christine Owenell.
Copper operates on a hybrid model where authors invest in production costs while retaining the bulk of revenue. "We make a dollar a book," Trowbridge said. "Everything else royalty-wise goes to the author."
Trowbridge said she feels a competitive advantage over working with traditional publishers because of Copper's "white glove, high touch" approach. The company uses a custom AI tool for structural manuscript reviews before books go through developmental editing, line editing, copy editing, and proofreading.
She sees books as career accelerators. "I believe that a book should be a fulcrum," she said, citing Archimedes. "Your lever is the message you have, the mission is this heavy thing you want to lift. The book is the fulcrum that allows you to really launch your mission into the world." She believes authors, then, have the greatest success when they view publishing "as being part of a bigger career move."
Copper has raised venture funding from Wave Capital, Oxonian Ventures, and EQ Ventures. Individual backers include Zibby Books founder Zibby Owens, former PayPal CEO Dan Schulman, and former Time Inc. president Fran Hauser. Bestselling author Adam Grant serves as an advisor.
The company plans to launch two new imprints, including the fiction-focused Copper House and a faith-focused imprint. It will also relaunch Author Camp, a course for aspiring authors, in April and produce a video series about publishing.
