Building A New Deal For Creators
By Afdhel Aziz, Forbes Magazine
For decades, publishing has asked creators to accept a deal that would feel absurd in almost any other industry. Write the book. Hand over most of the value. Accept an advance that is really a loan. Then, once the manuscript is done, get ready to market it yourself.
Soulprint Media was built in direct response to that reality.
The new publishing and content studio, co-founded by Robin Ducharme, John Kim, Tarah Malhotra-Feinberg, and Hilary Swanson, is not trying to become a kinder version of the old model. It is trying to replace the logic underneath it. The author is not the product. The author is the partner. The book is not the end point. It is the beginning of a larger ecosystem.
"We’re going to be radically honest, and we're going to be truth tellers. Truth cuts like a knife sometimes, but that's disruption in its greatest form," says Ducharme, Soulprint’s co-founder and strategic director.
For Malhotra-Feinberg, Soulprint’s co-founder and head of studio, that difference starts with one simple question: what would publishing look like if partnership actually meant partnership?
“We’re going to make 50/50 deals with creators, because that’s what partnership actually means.”
That is a striking proposition in an industry where creators have long been asked to give up the lion’s share of the upside. Swanson, Soulprint’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, spent years inside traditional publishing and has little patience for the economics most authors are told to accept. “People tell us a 50/50 split is crazy. I actually think that taking 85% of an artist’s work is crazy.”
That frustration is not theoretical. Kim, Soulprint co-founder and a nine-time author, has lived the old system from the inside. He knows the thrill of landing a book deal, and the disappointment that can follow. “What they don’t tell you is that advance is basically a loan.”
That line gets to the heart of what Soulprint is trying to change. Traditional publishing still presents itself as a system that discovers and champions talent. But too often, the experience for authors is opaque, lonely and extractive. Once the book is sold, the writer can lose control of the process, the marketing burden often falls back on the creator, and the long-term value of the idea may already be slipping away.
That matters even more now because a book is no longer just a book. It can become a podcast, a course, a speaking platform, a series, a show or something else entirely. As Kim puts it, “In 2026, IP is everything.”
That sentence lands because it reflects a much bigger shift in media. The most valuable asset is not just the printed object. It is the idea behind it and the many ways that idea can travel.
The publishing problem is not only financial
Soulprint’s founders are clear that money is only one part of the problem. The other part is gatekeeping.
Swanson describes an industry that has grown overly cautious, overly centralized and far too comfortable with its own habits. “There just hasn’t been something to upend publishing. All the power is concentrated in a very small group at the very top. And they have done a very good job of keeping it that way.”
That concentration of power shapes who gets through the door in the first place. “Publishing has typically been something for rich white people who have MFAs and who were able to work an unpaid internship, who were able to rely on trust funds or other forms of privilege.”
The result is not just inequity. It is creative stagnation.
Malhotra-Feinberg sees that stagnation everywhere in media right now. “Never before have they been able to move faster, change culture, normalize different things, change hearts and minds. Yet what’s happening more and more is homogenization. We’re seeing so much sameness.”
He is especially frustrated by the way large media companies still dismiss huge human experiences as too narrow to matter. “A traditional media company looks at a topic like menopause or neurodivergence or boy moms as too niche. Are you kidding me? Half the population is not a niche.”
Ducharme puts it in more human terms. “The way I see Soulprint is bringing together the voices, the people in the world that are the change makers — the Wayshowers. People that are just walking this life in such alignment that when you see them, when you hear them, it resonates deeply, and it creates change.”
That is one of the core bets behind Soulprint. The company is not looking for the safest category or the most predictable audience. It is looking for stories with real emotional demand that existing gatekeepers have underestimated or ignored.
“Traditional media is looking in the rear view mirror, and we’re looking at the road ahead,” Malhotra-Feinberg says.
A first proof point, not just a philosophy
What makes Soulprint more interesting than a manifesto is that it has already begun to test the model in public.
Its first major release is Real Love Ready, the debut book from co-founder Ducharme, which launched on April 7 and was timed to debut around In Bloom, the Vancouver summit Ducharme’s company hosts each April. But the book was never meant to stand alone. Soulprint built a broader launch around it, including a trailer, a podcast and video series, and a larger media ecosystem designed to extend the life of the idea beyond the page.
That approach reflects one of Soulprint’s central beliefs: a book should not arrive in the world as a finished object and then be left to fend for itself. It should be developed as part of a living conversation.
Malhotra-Feinberg explains it this way. “A 30-second TikTok can make a valuable impact as much as a 300-page book in the right context, because either one could change someone’s life in that moment.”
That is not a rejection of books. In fact, Soulprint treats books as a flagship format. But it refuses the old hierarchy that assumes deeper value only comes in one form. Audiences do not care about format for its own sake. They care whether the story reaches them in a way that matters.
“People don’t care if it’s a book, a reel, or a podcast. What they care about is, does this story or this information enrich my life?”
That line may be the clearest summary of Soulprint’s media strategy. Meet people where they are. Build around need, not tradition. Let the story decide the form.
A more human model
There is another part of Soulprint’s pitch that feels just as important. It wants to make the creative process less isolating.
Writing a book can be thrilling, but it can also be brutal. Kim names that directly. “Creating — and especially writing — can be a really lonely experience.”
Soulprint wants to change that by building a company that acts less like a gatekeeper and more like a studio partner. Not just editing and packaging the work, but helping creators shape the larger world around it.
Ducharme, Soulprint’s first author as well as a co-founder, felt the difference firsthand. “I felt very supported, I felt very held. And that is what we want to provide for our authors.”
That may sound simple, but in a business that has often treated authors as commodities, it is a meaningful shift.
Soulprint is betting that creators want more than a contract. They want ownership. They want transparency. They want help. They want a team that understands a story might become much bigger than the first format it appears in.
And they want a process that does not strip humanity out of making something meaningful.
If Soulprint succeeds, it will not just have launched a new company. It will have shown that there’s a new model for creators that can be fairer, faster, more creative and more honest than the system we have been told to settle for.