When to choose a small press to publish your writing
By Adhithi Anjali, written November 2023
You completed a manuscript in one step, but now you have to decide where to publish it. With consistent news about small-to-medium presses getting subsumed by another huge player and navigating through imprints and subsidiaries of the same giant press, it may appear like the world of publishing has become permanently smaller. But before you try to find an agent and try to break into the notorious “Big Five,” try researching a variety of smaller, local presses that are still determined to provide alternate publishing paths.
Why would you consider a small press over a large one? First, consider your own manuscript and its needs. Large presses often focus on publishing what is consistent with current readership trends. Remember when every dystopian novel suddenly got published right after The Hunger Games? As an author, you need to prove you and your work are marketable before the editing even starts. The first person you need to convince is an agent who can get you through the door, and they are also looking for something that can secure a payday.
But small presses can manage and publish more esoteric and nontraditional work. In fact, that is often the basis for their whole business model! Small presses want to find a niche and seek out the audience for it. These types of presses often begin as passion projects for their founder: they see something missing from current publishing trends and want to provide the resources for artists making what they want to read. Here at Yellow Arrow Publishing, we want to read work by women-identifying authors, so we made a space for them.
To get in the door at a small press does not require an agent and sometimes does not require a submission fee. It is up to you as the author to determine if your manuscript is too nontraditional for large publishers and if you want to handle your own submission queries. The underhand of not relying on agents does mean that small presses often have narrow submission windows during the year in which you can send us your manuscript, but once your manuscript gets picked up, most can start working immediately.
If you choose a small press, also consider how much you want to be involved in the process. You will receive edits back to review, be involved in marketing the book through local events and live readings, and you may have to handle much of the social media promotion yourself, as well. Small presses can upload interviews you have with them, but you won’t secure big papers like you would with a big publisher—if they put a lot of resources into your manuscript, which is not a guarantee, even at such large presses.
But you as an author have to do a lot of research if you go down this route. Small presses know their audience and their niche, and you will need to learn which press will get your manuscript out to the right readers. Also, you will need to consider the form of your manuscript. Here at Yellow Arrow, we publish a journal, an online vignette, and chapbooks, not full-length manuscripts . . . yet.
A small press may not have a myriad of resources, but they do try to put all that they do have into what they decide to publish. As an author, you will be a huge part of the process—before, during, and after. Overall, you should consider a small press if you want to write and publish something nontraditional in form and content, as well as if you want to avoid the bureaucracy and limits of agents and the submissions process.
Adhithi Anjali was the business development intern for Yellow Arrow Publishing for fall 2023. She is a third-year student at the University of California, Davis, majoring in English and comparative literature. She is inspired by nearly everything she reads to channel her own creativity through the pen. In the future, she hopes to continue working with literature and other writers to help them bring their creativity to light.
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