When young adult author Courtney Summers got the rights back to her backlisted titles in 2024, she initially wasn’t sure what to do with them.

Summers’ novels, the bulk of which enjoyed peak popularity in the 2010s, had by then faded into the periphery — despite a film adaptation of her 2012 zombie thriller “This Is Not a Test,” which is slated to be released in theaters Feb. 20. But the Canadian author felt they still had potential.

That’s how she wound up pitching a “Taylor’s Version”-style rerelease of her backlist to a handful of desired publishers. Under this model, Summers would publish lightly revised versions of her old books — “make the background vocals stronger and the guitar richer,” so to speak — in the hopes of reanimating her work and reaching a new generation of readers.

Her unorthodox plan had one fledgling publisher’s name all over it — Bindery Books.

Co-founded by book marketing veteran Matt Kaye and former Becker&mayer! editor Meghan Harvey, Bindery Books is a publishing startup and membership platform that integrates influencer marketing into the book publication process. Unlike traditional publishing houses, Bindery operates via a handful of influencer-led imprints, designed to better serve reader interest and take the burden of book promotion off under-resourced authors.

“Bookish creators wanted to figure out how to build a career doing what they love. Authors want to reach an audience,” Kaye said. So he and Harvey decided to play matchmaker.

Bindery currently houses 12 imprints helmed by book influencers, or as Kaye called them, “tastemakers.” Oftentimes, these atypical acquiring editors grew their online book communities for several years before landing at Bindery.

Kathryn Budig, head of the speculative fiction imprint the Inky Phoenix, started her online book club of the same name in 2020. She published her first title with Bindery in 2024.

When Bindery’s acquisitions director Shira Schindel brought her Summers’ backlog last year, Budig first pulled “This Is Not a Test,” the most speculative of the bunch, and was immediately hooked.

“I read it, I went back to Shira and was like, ‘Give it to me. Mine. Mine,’” she said.

Since then, Budig has labored tirelessly to stoke enthusiasm for Summers’ book among her Inky Phoenix community members. Her genuine pride in Summers’ work, and eagerness for it to succeed, is tangible in every post and promotional video — just like Kaye and Harvey imagined.

The trust between Summers and Budig was immediate, the latter said: “We started a dev[elopmental] edit before we even inked the papers.”

It was a completely different publishing experience than Summers was used to, she said. Her previous publishers had been either too overworked or unbothered to treat her and her work with the respect she felt she deserved.

Under Budig’s wing, Summers said she was cared for and included in editorial decision-making, in part thanks to a project manager — a role typically not seen at legacy publishing houses. The author added that for the first time in the 14 years after its publication, “This Is Not a Test” is a Kids Indie Next pick.

For the Bindery team to make that happen, she said, “they pulled levers I can’t imagine would be possible in a more traditional model.”

Few of Bindery’s authors have Summers’ high profile or sizable backlog. Instead, nearly all of its titles are debuts, and about a third of its authors are unagented, Kaye said. Last year, several Bindery books hit bestseller and year-end lists.

Kaye attributed Bindery’s success to its nontraditional model, which by leveraging so-called “bookfluencer” reach integrates reader sentiment into the publication process rather than attempting to anticipate it — as many publishing houses still do.

“Part of what we’re trying to do is have that immediacy, like, you’re not many, many steps removed from the reader,” he said. “You’re actually in conversation with them every day.”

Nina Haines, the tastemaker behind Bindery’s Sapph-Lit imprint, said that she solicited member input on the imprint’s prospective debut titles before she’d even read the manuscripts. The synopsis that won by a landslide was Kim Narby’s “Saturn Returning,” expected in May.

Given traditional publishing has historically sidelined queer authors and refused them marketing budgets, Haines said she hopes to be “that person that gets it and fights for it.”

Jananie Velu, who heads Bindery’s Boundless Press imprint, has similarly aimed to enfranchise underrepresented authors — in her case, authors of color — whom she felt the publishers she formerly worked for never truly gave a chance.

“I spent years butting my head against the wall, like, ‘Why can’t I get more budget for this author?’” Velu said, adding that her past employers heavily devalued the influence of BookTok and “bookfluencing” on publishing.

“So the idea that I would get to choose the books and really be a champion for those books from day one, I felt was just really exciting,” she said.

Jane Friedman, a book industry veteran and author of “The Bottom Line” publishing industry newsletter, views the Bindery model as an effective “middle ground” between traditional book marketing and online influencing.

While the analyst said she was unsure of how scalable it is, she said the publisher’s tastemaker strategy “reads as very Gen Z and maybe an indicator of where the industry needs to go to stay fresh and relevant.”

Bindery is not yet profitable, Harvey said. But that’s on the horizon.

In the meantime, she said, the startup plans to grow — “slowly … so that every author’s needs are taken care of” — and keep pinpointing publishing “blind spots.”

“We as an industry tend to go for the surest bets,” Harvey said.

“But it’s very interesting to me to think about how you could find these really engaged communities around either underexposed or emerging genre interests, [where] readers are there but publishers aren’t.”

Actor Chris Pine was just 13 when his family’s finances took a turn and his parents lost their home.

So when the “Star Trek” actor read the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” from author Matthew Desmond, about eight families who fight to stay housed in Milwaukee, he knew he had to make a film out of it.

“The power of what we do as filmmakers … is really to remind people that we are not alone, that our experiences are transcendent,” Pine recently told an audience at the Sundance Film Festival. “This is one of those stories.”

Pine is producing a documentary based on the book and it’s among several projects backed by Harbor Fund, an emerging Utah-based nonprofit investment group that leverages the donations of high-net-worth individuals and other investors to support films, television shows and documentaries that have a positive social message.

“Good stories can change how people feel,” Lindsay Hadley, Harbor Fund’s co-founder and chief executive, said in an interview. “We just really believe in the power of film and the entertainment world to harness a society of compassion.”

Since it began about a year and a half ago, the fund has raised $15 million from 82 donors with an average contribution of $250,000. Already, Hadley said, $10 million has been deployed across 22 projects, including “Evicted.”

“It’s rooted in housing policy and economics, but at its core, it’s about people — and stories like this aren’t always easy to back in an industry built to minimize risk,” Pine said in a statement.

“Harbor Fund immediately understood the moral center of the film and why it needed to be told honestly. Their mission goes beyond financing films. They care about what happens after a premiere — about bringing films into communities that initiate civic conversation and making sure the conversation continues beyond the screen.”

Finding a consensus on what constitutes a social good can be tricky, especially in the current fraught and deeply partisan political climate.

Hadley said she gets extensive advice on pitches from the fund’s advisory board, which includes filmmakers like Patty Jenkins, David Oyelowo, Amy Redford and Mark Burnett. The projects seek to home in on shared values and avoid works that dehumanize other people, she said.

Harbor Fund wants to reach $100 million in the next two years, said Hadley, who previously served as chief development officer for advocacy organization Global Citizen and has produced its annual festival in New York’s Central Park that supports social issues.

Efforts to finance socially conscious films aren’t new. Culver City-based production company Participant built its reputation around projects that prioritized social commentary, including Al Gore’s 2006 environmental documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” as well as Oscar-winning feature films such as 2015’s “Spotlight” and 2018’s “Green Book.” But the company closed in 2024 as the market for independent films changed drastically.

The traditional business model for indie films has broken down as audiences still have not shown up to theaters with the same enthusiasm as before the pandemic. Add to that a shrinking number of distributors — though some new ones recently emerged — and the inherent risk of funding a movie, and it’s no surprise investors have shied away.

“Theatrical windows used to be the lifeblood of independent film, and now it’s basically gone,” said David Offenberg, an associate professor of finance at Loyola Marymount University and author of the book “Independent Film Finance.”

Harbor Fund’s model for financing is rare, he said, though it taps into one of the big motivations for investors to fund movies and TV — social impact.

“A lot of investors are putting money into film because they want to make a change in the world and they want the movie to help make that change,” Offenberg said.

With a nonprofit venture capital-type structure, no costly production arm and a diversified portfolio, Harbor Fund aims to be sustainable, Hadley said. The fund also has invite-only forums, such as last year’s in Montana that featured actor Kevin Costner, where investors can hear about potential projects directly from those involved, which can include A-list stars.

Donors engage with the fund knowing they will not see a return on their investment. They choose projects they want to support, Harbor Fund takes an equity position in it, and any money it makes is invested back into the fund for future films and TV series.

“If it’s successful, it’s a gift that keeps giving,” Hadley said.

Investor Shauna Ockey of Calgary chose to contribute to the documentary “Orphan Myth,” which details the plight of children separated from family members in poverty, because she sees it as a social return rather than a financial one.

“Reuniting children with families so they don’t grow up in institutions is an important part of me and my husband’s value systems,” said Ockey, who has contributed $350,000 to Harbor Fund with her husband. “When you invest philanthropically in a film, of course you want to have the best outcome, but … not all films are going to be box office hits. But if it just impacts a few people, that’s a good enough return.”

The fund’s projects span a wide range of subjects, from “Hershey,” a film set for release this year about the philanthropic legacy of eponymous chocolate-maker Milton Hershey and his wife, Catherine, to “Flash Before the Bang,” a movie about a deaf track team.

The investments help pay the overhead costs for these films in part because of the belief that big-name stars will attract a larger audience and, hopefully, create more change, Hadley said.

For West Point, Utah-based investor Lloyd Roberts, the 2006 Will Smith drama “The Pursuit of Happyness,” about a father and son who struggle to find housing, changed his thinking about the role of perspective in feelings of fulfillment.

“You can have someone stand onstage and tell you these ideas, but you put it in a feature film like ‘The Pursuit of Happyness,’ and you feel like you have a firsthand view of how putting it into practice can help you,” said Roberts, who has invested a little more than $1 million in the fund and believes audiences will reap the benefits.

“One of the best mechanisms for an idea is not just documentaries but motion pictures that have an underlying message that pulls on their heartstrings,” he said.

Connor Cipolla, an Eaton wildfire survivor, last year praised Southern California Edison’s plan of burying more than 60 miles of electric lines in Altadena as it rebuilds to reduce the risk of fire.

Then he learned he would have to pay $20,000 to $40,000 to connect his home, which was damaged by smoke and ash, to Edison’s new underground line. A nearby neighbor received an estimate for $30,000, he said.

“Residents are so angry,” Cipolla said. “We were completely blindsided.”

Other residents have tracked the wooden stakes Edison workers put up, showing where crews will dig. They’ve found dozens of places where deep trenches are planned under oak and pine trees that survived the fire. In addition to the added costs they face, they fear many trees will die as crews cut their roots.

“The damage is being done now and it’s irreversible,” homeowner Robert Steller said, pointing Maiden Lane to where an Edison crew was working.

For a week, Steller, who lost his home in the fire, parked his Toyota 4Runner over a recently dug trench. He said he was trying to block Edison’s crew from burying a large transformer between two towering deodar cedar trees. The work would “be downright fatal” to the decades-old trees, he said.

The buried lines are an upgrade that will make Altadena’s electrical grid safer and more reliable, Edison says, and it also will lower the risk that the company would have to black out Altadena neighborhoods during dangerous Santa Ana winds to prevent fires.

Brandon Tolentino, an Edison vice president, said the company was trying to find government or charity funding to help homeowners pay to connect to the buried lines. In the meantime, he said, Edison decided to allow owners of homes that survived the fire to keep their overhead connections until financial help was available.

Tolentino added that the company planned meetings to listen to residents’ concerns, including about the trees. He said crews were trained to stop work when they find tree roots and switch from using a backhoe to digging by hand to protect them.

“We’re minimizing the impact on the trees as we [put lines] underground or do any work in Altadena,” he said.

Although placing cables underground is a fire prevention measure, consumer advocates point out it’s not the most cost-effective step Edison can take to reduce the risk.

Undergrounding electric wires can cost more than $6 million per mile, according to the state Public Utilities Commission, far more than building overhead wires.

Because utility shareholders put up part of the money needed to pay for burying the lines, the expensive work means they will earn more profit. Last year, the commission agreed Edison investors could earn an annual return of 10.03% on that money.

Edison said in April it would spend as much as $925 million to underground and rebuild its grid in Altadena and Malibu, where the Palisades fire caused devastation. That amount of construction spending will earn Edison and its shareholders more than $70 million in profit before taxes — an amount billed to electric customers — in the first year, according to calculations by Mark Ellis, the former chief economist for Sempra, the parent company of Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric.

That annual return will continue over the decades while slowly decreasing each year as the assets are depreciated, Ellis said.

“They’re making a nice profit on this,” he said.

Tolentino said the company wasn’t doing the work to profit.

“The primary reason for undergrounding is the wildfire mitigation,” he said. “Our focus is supporting the community as they rebuild.”

It’s unclear if the Eaton fire would have been less disastrous if Altadena’s neighborhood power lines had been buried. The blaze ignited under Edison’s towering transmission lines that run down the mountainside in Eaton Canyon. Those lines carry bulk power through Edison’s territory. The power lines being put underground are the smaller distribution lines, which carry power to homes.

A power line outside the home of Altadena resident Connor Cipolla.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

The investigation into the fire’s cause has not yet been released. Edison says a leading theory is that one of the Eaton Canyon transmission lines, which hadn’t carried power for 50 years, might have briefly reenergized, sparking the blaze. The fire killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes, businesses and other structures.

Edison said it has no plans to bury those transmission lines.

The high cost of undergrounding has become a contentious issue in Sacramento because, under state rules, most or all of it is billed to all customers of the utility.

Before the Eaton fire, Edison won praise from consumer advocates by installing insulated overhead wires that sharply cut the risk of the lines sparking a fire for a fraction of the cost. Since 2019, the company has installed more than 6,800 miles of the insulated wires.

“A dollar spent reconductoring with covered conductor provides … over four times as much value in wildfire risk mitigation as a dollar spent on underground conversion,” Edison said in testimony before the utilities commission in 2018.

By comparison, Pacific Gas & Electric has relied more on undergrounding its lines to reduce the risk of fire, pushing up customer utility bills. Now Edison has shifted to follow PG&E’s example.

Mark Toney, executive director of the the Utility Reform Network, a consumer group in San Francisco, said his staff estimates Edison spends $4 million per mile to underground wires compared with $800,000 per mile for installing insulated lines.

By burying more lines, customer bills and Edison’s profits could soar, Toney said.

“Five times the cost is equal to five times the profit,” he said.

Last spring, Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Gov. Gavin Newsom about the company’s undergrounding plans in a letter. Pizarro wrote that rules at the utility commission would require Altadena and Malibu homeowners to pay to underground the electric wire from their property line to the panel on their house. He estimated it would cost $8,000 to $10,000 for each home.

Residents who need to dig long trenches may pay far more than that, said Cipolla, who is a member of the Altadena Town Council.

An oak tree stands tall in an area impacted by the Eaton fires. Homeowners worry such trees could be at risk in the undergrounding work.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

Last week, Cipolla showed a reporter the electrical panel on the back of his house, which is many yards away from where he needs to connect to Edison’s line. The company also initially wanted him to dig up the driveway he poured seven years ago, he said. Edison later agreed to a location that avoids the driveway.

Tolentino said Edison’s crews were working with homeowners concerned about the company’s planned locations for the buried lines.

“We understand it is a big cost and we’re looking at different sources to help them,” he said.

At the same time, some residents are fuming that, despite the undergrounding work, most of the town’s neighborhoods still will have overhead telecommunications lines. In other areas of the state, the telecommunications companies have worked with the electric utilities to bury all the lines, eliminating the visual clutter.

So far, the telecom companies have agreed to underground only a fraction of their lines in Altadena, Tolentino said.

Cipolla said Edison executives told him they eventually plan to chop off the top of new utility poles the company installed after the fire, leaving the lower portion that holds the telecom lines.

“There is no beautification aspect to it whatsoever,” Cipolla said.

As for the trees, Steller and other residents are asking Edison to adjust its construction map to avoid digging near those that remain after the fire. Altadena lost more than half of its tree cover in the blaze and as crews cleared lots of debris.

Wynne Wilson, a fire survivor and co-founder of Altadena Green, pointed out that the lot across the street from the giant cedar trees on Maiden Lane has no vegetation, making it a better place for Edison’s transformer.

“This is needless,” Wilson said. “People are dealing with so much. Is Edison thinking we won’t fight over this?”

Carolyn Hove, raising her voice to be heard over the crew operating a jackhammer in front of her home, asked: “How much more are we supposed to go through?”

Hove said she doesn’t blame the crews of subcontractors the utility hired, but Edison’s management.

“It’s bad enough our community was decimated by a fire Edison started,” she said. “We’re still very traumatized, and then to have this happen.”