By: Jessica Smith
Every year, millions of books enter a marketplace that is simultaneously more accessible and more competitive than at any point in publishing history. The barriers to publication have never been lower. The barriers to visibility have never been higher. And the gap between those two realities is where most authors quietly lose.
DeVasha Lloyd has been watching that gap widen for two decades, and she has spent the last several years building a company designed to close it.
Why Most Books Fail to Find Their Audience
The problem isn’t writing. It isn’t even quality. The publishing industry’s most persistent challenge is strategic, and it begins with a fundamental misunderstanding of what a book is for.
Most authors, particularly first-time authors, think about publication as a destination. They work toward it, arrive at it, and then wait for something to happen. What they discover, often too late, is that the book’s release is not the moment the work pays off. It is the moment the real work begins.
DeVasha has watched this pattern repeat itself throughout her career at Forbes Books, WebMD, Everyday Health, and across the hundreds of conversations she has had with authors, executives, and thought leaders at every level of the industry. The books that struggle aren’t usually the weakest ones. They are often the ones that simply had no strategy for what came after the launch.
That observation is the founding principle of Elevation Publishing Group.
A Different Kind of Publishing Company
Elevation Publishing Group operates as a hybrid publisher, but the model is less about the label than about the philosophy underneath it. DeVasha built the company around a belief that authors deserve professional quality, full ownership of their work, transparent support, and a genuine strategy for turning their book into something larger than a single title.
The company’s process moves from publishing strategy consultation through manuscript development to professional production and targeted promotion, all within a four to six month window that respects the pace of today’s content environment. Authors can write their own manuscript or collaborate with a ghostwriter. They can publish under their own business imprint. And throughout the process they work with a team that is invested in the outcome, not just the output.
What DeVasha brings to that process is something most publishing companies, regardless of size, cannot replicate. A career’s worth of understanding about how content performs across platforms, how audiences are built, and how the right positioning at the right moment can turn a book into a career-defining asset rather than a one-time project.
The Bigger Picture
DeVasha’s partnership with Forbes Books gives Elevation Publishing Group clients access to one of the most respected publishing imprints in the business world. Her relationships with major health systems, media organizations, and Fortune 500 brands give her an unusually clear view of what decision-makers, patients, and consumers are actually looking for in the content they choose to engage with.
That perspective informs every project she takes on. Not just whether the book is well-written, but whether it is well-timed, well-positioned, and built to travel beyond the people who already know the author’s name.
What the Industry Needs More Of
The most honest thing DeVasha says about publishing is also the most clarifying. The book is not the destination. It is the entry point. The authors who understand that from the beginning are the ones who build real platforms. The ones who don’t are the ones who publish once and wonder why nothing changed.
Her company exists to make sure more authors understand it from the beginning.
In a publishing landscape that produces more content than it can possibly support, the authors who rise are the ones with a strategy behind the story. DeVasha Lloyd has spent twenty years building that strategy for other people’s platforms. Now she’s building it into her own.
Discover more about DeVasha Lloyd and the vision behind her work at Elevation Publishing Group.
