The last few weeks have been quite eventful here at DropCap. We are working on new projects, developing bright ideas, and… We’re delighted to announce that we have a new CEO.

Our former Chief Operating Officer, Lindsay Jones, who has been at DropCap from the very early days, has taken over as Chief Executive Officer. Please join us in celebrating this well-deserved accomplishment that will take the company to the next level.

A brief interview with our new CEO

💻 About the company

What about this company makes you the most proud?

I’m insanely proud of our team and all of the hard work they have put in to make DropCap what it is today. Their ideas, drive, and commitment are what make DropCap an amazing place to work, and I think that is reflected in the work we do for our authors and publishers, as well.

What values do you prioritize in your company culture?

For me, it’s really important to cultivate an employee-first culture. This means promoting collaborative decision making and transparency between employees and the leadership team and really just making sure we are walking the walk when it comes to work-life balance for our team. I’m a big believer in flexible hours and giving employees the freedom to get their work done in whatever way is most productive for them.

♟️ Your vision

What are the key elements of your vision?

Just as a drop cap heralds the beginning of a new chapter in a book, I want DropCap to represent a new chapter in how subsidiary rights are bought and sold and who has access to these opportunities. Indie authors and publishers are putting out amazing books that are too often overlooked in the licensing world simply due to lack of access to the decision-makers. I want DropCap to be the first and last place publishers, agents, and editors go to find great content to license, and we’re on a mission to make sure that content is coming from independent authors and publishers.

What is your management style?

I think trust between myself and my team is the most important element of my management style. I try to convey to my employees that I have high expectations, but I trust them to problem-solve and execute on their own. At the same time, they know they can come to me for guidance and honest feedback.

How do you improve connectedness between employees being a remote company?

Slack is really our savior here. It allows our team to quickly and easily interact in a more immediate way than email, and it’s by far the best group messaging platform that I have used. Zoom, of course, is also integral to our day-to-day, and whenever we meet, we always have our cameras on. It’s important to have that layer of visual communication through facial expressions and body language in addition to being able to hear someone’s voice. The trickiest part for a remote team is replicating the bonding experiences that come more naturally when you work together in an office. For example, in an office you might have a send-off party for an employee on their last day. How do you replicate this over Zoom? Recently, we marked an employee’s last day by getting together on Zoom and providing book recommendations to the departing employee as a going away gift. This helped acknowledge the good work that was done by the employee and gave the team a chance to connect over something not work-related. Honestly, I liked it better than “there’s cake in the break room.”

🎯 Goals & challenges

What project are you most excited about?

Right now, I’m most excited about DropCap Marketplace. DropCap started life as a tech-enabled rights agency. We’ve built a sophisticated rights management platform that allows us to list all of our publishers’ books, and our licensing partners from around the world can log in to view information about the books, instantly access PDFs, view and sign contracts, and more. With the launch of DropCap Marketplace, we have expanded access to this platform beyond the publishers that we represent—now authors can list their books and make them available to the thousands of global rights-buying partners that are already using our platform. To me, this is a game-changer for the rights licensing industry and is the first step in democratizing access to rights licensing opportunities.

What have been the biggest challenges you've faced so far?

It’s been a tumultuous few years, especially coming out of the pandemic. We definitely felt the two-year absence of the international book fairs, then returning to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2022 was bittersweet when so many of our Ukrainian colleagues were not able to join us. As a company, we feel the effects of the many terrible world events that have and are taking place in recent years, but our philosophy is to just keep trying to bring people together through books.

What were your biggest accomplishments last year?

Our agency had its best year ever, signing 680 new licenses on behalf of our publishers and authors. Launching DropCap Marketplace was also a huge accomplishment for us.

📚 Publishing industry

What do you see as the biggest threats to our industry as a whole?

Well the big looming threat, of course, is AI and its impact on creative industries. While AI may get really good at writing in the future, I don’t think it can ever replicate the authentic experiences of authors that inform their writing—it will always be soulless. The real issue will be (and it’s already happening) how do we as both readers and professionals wade through the ever-growing mass of AI-generated content to find the real-deal? I’m actually hopeful that AI will force a resurgence of local bookstores and shift importance back to librarians and other curators of quality content. These are sources of books that support our local communities and seem the natural place to turn when you can no longer trust what you’re buying online.

What other companies and leaders do you look to as models or examples?

I am really inspired by other women in leadership roles in publishing, especially those who are doing things a bit differently. I think high-quality hybrid publishing is the future of independent publishing in many ways, so I love what Leslie Miller and Ingrid Emerick of Girl Friday Productions are doing to educate and support authors in their publishing journeys.

💁🏻‍♀️ Personal touch

What do you do outside of your professional life?

I have a smart, sassy kindergarten-age daughter who keeps me on my toes whenever I’m not working. But when I’m able to find the time my favorite hobby (big surprise) is reading. Dark fantasy and magical realism are my go-to genres, but as a rule, I like to alternate fiction and nonfiction titles. I read once that fiction and nonfiction engage different parts of your brain, and while I’m not sure if this is true, I like to think it’s keeping me sharp.

What is your philosophy on work-life balance?

I think it’s really important, even if you’re working long hours, that when you are not working, you are truly not working. I have timers set for my Slack notifications, so I only see messages during business hours, and I absolutely refuse to allow email push notifications on my phone. If I’m spending time with my family or even grabbing a few minutes for myself, I want to be wholly focused on that. I highly recommend embracing single-tasking!

In good company...

Publishers Weekly has just released an insightful article addressing the industry’s gender imbalances. While reading on, we were glad to come across familiar names: our partners, established and new, are part of this growing community of female-led groups. We are thrilled to be part of the movement too. We would like to take the opportunity to mention the amazing work that Greenleaf Book Group, Girl Friday Productions, and Teacher Created Materials are doing to give visibility to women in publishing.

" Women have long been the backbone of the publishing industry. They’re the editors, publicists, production managers, agents, accountants, and marketing specialists who bring great books into the world. They’re the librarians and booksellers who get dazzling novels and gripping nonfiction works into readers’ hands. However, women are still underrepresented in the industry’s top leadership positions." — Publishers Weekly

Read full article

Our favorite books on Leadership

We cannot leave you without some book recommendations on this topic, we hope you like this selection of titles that Lindsay Jones herself has picked for the occasion.