In some ways, it’s never been easier to get in the game as an independent press—a reliable internet connection and some elbow grease can go a long way.
Succeeding is something else. The challenges are multifold. Securing reliable distribution at reasonable rates is tough, and production costs keep rising. Getting noticed remains difficult, especially in an increasingly fractured marketplace, as does competing with large publishing conglomerates. Finding ways to provide value to writers in an era of multiplying self-publishing and self-promotion options is always vexing. Then there’s the matter of pulling together enough funding to pay employees fairly. In other words, indie publishers have at least 99 problems, and money is behind many of them.
Still, each year, new presses find a foothold and take chances on authors and books that might otherwise never see the light of day. To find out what some houses have overcome to bring their titles into the world, we asked a diverse array of American independent publishers, all of which were founded within the past decade, about the challenges they’ve faced—and what advice they have for those hoping to break into the business today.
If you’re an independent publisher interested in participating in similar future pieces, click here. These responses have been edited for clarity and length.
1984 Publishing
Location: Cleveland
Founded: 2016
Principal staff: Matthew Chojnacki, founder and owner
Full-time employees: None
New titles per year: 6–8
Backlist: 35
Lead title this year: A Masterpiece in Disarray: David Lynch’s Dune – An Oral History by Max Evry (Aug.)
What is the mission or focus of your press? 1984 Publishing brings deluxe editions of pop culture books and premium film soundtrack releases to bookshelves and record crates worldwide.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? Authors are often skeptical about how an independent publisher can possibly be more beneficial for their project than the Big Five—in terms of attention, quality, and even royalties. Our current authors offer references on our work, which has proven beneficial in creating trust with writers less familiar with our company.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Have a real plan and vision that sets yourself apart from the rest of the market. What are your main selling points? What gap in the market are you hoping to fill? Also, don’t forget to have fun—and only choose projects that you really want to live with for a year or more.
Archway Editions
Location: Brooklyn
Founded: 2019
Principal staff: Chris Molnar, publisher and editorial director; Nicodemus Nicoludis, publisher and managing editor; Naomi Falk, senior editor
Full-time employees: None
New titles per year: 6–10
Backlist: 18
Lead title this year: Last Poems by John Farris (Nov.)
What is the mission or focus of your press? To publish the finest authors, at all stages of their careers, who write material which is at odds with the prevailing status quo, both legendary and emerging.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? The biggest challenge we’ve faced has been printer and logistical delays during the pandemic. We handled it through superhuman patience and willingness to try different things.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? It’s the hardest, least remunerative thing you could possibly think of doing—which means there’s no excuse to do anything except exactly what brings you joy, and that sticking with it is brave and noble. Someday it’ll all be worth it, we promise. (We think!)
Chatwin Books
Location: Seattle
Founded: 2014
Principal staff: Phil Bevis, cofounder and publisher; Annie Brulé, cofounder and design director
Full-time employees: 7
New titles per year: 10
Backlist: 85
Lead title this year: In So Many Words: Three Years, Two Months, One Me by Mary Lou Sanelli (Sept.)
What is the mission or focus of your press? A zest for exploration and constant learning, a diverse curiosity about the world and the peoples in it, a keen eye for quality, and a dose of oddball humor.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? Building a sustainable and profitable trade distribution program has been a challenge since I started my original imprint Arundel Press in 1984. The existing distribution channels don’t just serve bricks-and-mortar bookstores, instead primarily supplying books to online discounters. This undermines retailers’ ability to sell through on small press books as buyers engage in a process called showrooming, which means that the stores that order, stock, and display your books are less likely to get the sales they inspire. This showrooming also adds to the problem of returns, which are currently at damaging levels.
We finally found an answer over the past year, and I am proud to have been part of the solution through cofounding a fast-growing distributor called Asterism, which supports bricks-and-mortar stores by not selling to online discounters and not taking returns except in the case of events. It is getting steady reorders from the toughest stores in the country to sell into, because when customers don’t showroom, the books sell through. A key takeaway for me has been that books that are sold do not need to be returned. After more than 40 years in the book business, I never thought that I would see an answer to the problem of returns. But I am seeing it now.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? I would encourage publishers just starting out to see themselves as backlist publishers, rather than frontist publishers focused on new releases and books for the moment. Look for perennials—books that will be as interesting in 10 years as they are today. That lets you build your business. At Chatwin, our backlist consistently generates over 80% of sales. That is healthy, and that makes a press sustainable. If you plan to live off your frontlist, that means being like a shark—you can never stop swimming.
Clash Books
Location: Troy, N.Y.
Founded: 2016
Principal staff: Christoph Paul, editor-in-chief; Leza Cantoral, publicity/managing editor; Kaitlyn Kessinger, managing editor
Full-time employees: 2
New titles per year: 20
Backlist: 70
Lead title this year: The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar (May)
What is the mission or focus of your press? Where high and low art meet to make something fresh, new, and exciting. We publish horror, literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and gift books.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? We [Christoph and Leza] got married and had a baby while switching from IngramSpark to a new distributor, Consortium. It was painful and brutal and exhausting. We said goodbye to sleep, survived the first year, then found good help in Kaitlyn. Now we’re a literal mom-and-pop press.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? The first five years are not going to be fun. Be in this for the long haul. Have a clear purpose of why the press exists, and the need it is filling.
Clevo Books
Location: Cleveland
Founded: 2015
Principal staff: Cathryn Siegal-Bergman, publisher
Full-time employees: 1
New titles per year: 3–6
Backlist: 6
Lead title this year: The Missing Professor by Andrea Instone, trans. by Rachel Reynolds (Aug.)
What is the mission or focus of your press? We currently focus on translating works from the German language.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? I published my first book in 2018. Then Covid happened. I was a one-person operation and did not have a good sense of which contractors to work with, so I had to postpone three cookbooks scheduled for release in 2020 and 2021. Last year, I was able to publish five books—including those cookbooks.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Start slowly. I wish I’d started more slowly, even with the same funding. It can get overwhelming.
Common Notions Press
Location: Brooklyn and Philadelphia
Founded: 2014
Principal staff: Malav Kanuga, publisher
Full-time employees: None (3 by end of 2024)
New titles per year: 12
Backlist: 50
Lead title this year: Daughter, Son, Assassin by Steve Salaita (May)
What is the mission or focus of your press? Inspiring and visionary works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry from writers and organizers leading today’s movements for economic, racial, ecological, and social change.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? The turbulence and volatility of the media industry has threatened lots of our press contacts with layoffs, increasing workloads and job insecurity, resulting in an increasingly revolving circuit of temporary jobs or freelance positions. We also find that it is harder for us to see a return on our press pitches that lands review attention, or to maintain durable relationships with outlets, their editors, and reviewers, who seem more frazzled, time-pressed, and scattered than ever. We’ve been reflecting on this at a personal as well as industry level, and as a short-term solution, have begun pitching in seasonal and thematic bundles. In the medium term, we are aiming to build deeper connections with smaller outlets. It takes more time and intentionality, but we believe it will help build a more resilient media ecosystem for indie presses.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? A publisher’s principles and practices have to be legible in their publishing program and marketing efforts. Develop relationships that are meaningful and reciprocal—with your authors, your distributors, and with several bookstores you align with. Publishing is an ecosystem, and you’ll do well when all are doing well.
Entre Ríos Books
Location: Seattle
Founded: 2015
Principal staff: Knox Gardner, publisher and editor-in-chief; Victor Chudnovsky, publisher
Full-time employees: 1
New titles per year: 4
Backlist: 18
Lead title this year: 100 Rooms by Vis-à-Vis Society (Fall)
What is the mission or focus of your press? Gay owned and queerly run, we are an independent press publishing poetry, poetics, translations, and collaborations between poets and artists of all types, with a specific interest in publishing contemporary Argentinian poetry in bilingual editions.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? Trying to run a press while rebuilding after a house fire during the pandemic was a disaster for our press. Thankfully, our poets were gracious about the situation.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Build in personal time off in your publishing schedule. There is always going to be more you wish you could do to promote your writers, but give yourself a chance to recharge and explore your own creativity.
Hidden Timber Books
Location: Milwaukee
Founded: 2019
Principal staff: Christi Craig, publisher
Full-time employees: 1
New titles per year: 1–3
Backlist: 8
Lead title this year: It Didn’t Start Out That Way by Judy Bridges (June)
What is the mission or focus of your press? We publish stories rooted in place, ranging from children’s books to novels and memoirs, that offer readers social and historical context and cultural and philosophical insights.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? Turning down submissions. As a young press with a small catalogue, I’m eager to build up our backlist. However, being a one-woman show, I value the time I put into editing and in working with authors, and I value the time readers give to our books. I have opened a few calls for submissions that did not yield a new project—not because the work we received wasn’t awesome, but because it didn’t quite fit our mission, or the manuscript needed more attention than I could give. So while being very selective of the work we publish, I also send more thoughtful rejections—notes that will encourage the writer to keep moving forward.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Keep true to your mission, even if it means it will take you longer to get where you want to be. Readers appreciate authenticity, and authenticity is your unique gift to the world of publishing.
Hinton Publishing
Location: Seattle
Founded: 2023
Principal staff: Marcus Harrison Green, publisher; Maggie Block, deputy publisher; Vladimir Verano, distribution
Full-time employees: 2
New titles per year: 2
Backlist: None
Lead title this year: Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist by Regan Jackson (Mar.)
What is the mission or focus of your press? Hinton elevates the voices, work, and talents of authors from communities that have historically faced disadvantage, disregard, and marginalization. Our mission is to uplift and resurface work that inspires, fosters belonging, challenges convention, stimulates thought, provokes action, and entertains while informing.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? Don’t strive to be everything to everyone. Strive to be something to those who aren’t regularly serviced or welcomed in our industry. Know exactly what your values are and stick to them. It’ll help you stand out in this ever-crowded landscape.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Outside of living the adage, like most publishers, that if you want to make a million in this business then you need to start with $5 million, one challenge has been navigating some of the bigoted reactions we’ve received—mainly on social media—due to our stated goal of prioritizing the voices of writers belonging to communities that have been historically under-invited to the publishing world. Despite narratives to the contrary, the fact is that this industry is still very much dominated by straight, cisgendered, white writers. We have absolutely nothing against writers who share that identity, but still find it galling that even pointing these discrepancies out can elicit a boiling cauldron of intolerance and bigotry. But as our deputy publisher, Maggie Block, often says: “When certain people are accustomed to dominance, the idea of equity seems like oppression.”
Iskanchi Press
Location: Salt Lake City
Founded: 2022
Principal staff: Kenechi Uzor, founder and CEO
Full-time employees: 5
New titles per year: 5
Backlist: 6
Lead title this year: The Civilization by K.M. McKenzie (Oct.)
What is the mission or focus of your press? Our mission is to promote authentic African perspectives in the United States through a variety of African books, including fiction, nonfiction, and children’s literature written in, or translated into, English.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? The biggest challenge was acquiring distribution. As a new press focusing on African literature, we had to find distributors who would see not just the cultural significance of our offerings but also the business value. The hardest part of the process was getting an audience with these distributors. But by attending book-related conferences and immersing ourselves in the publishing community, we met the decision-makers where they could hear us, and starting this month, Independent Publishers Group will distribute books published by Iskanchi Press.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Joining and being an active participant in publishing communities can be of immense benefit to a new publisher. Attend publishing conferences and webinars and network with other indie publishers to share resources, knowledge, and support. I have learned much from being a member of such publishing associations as the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, the Independent Book Publishers Association, and PubWest.
LittlePuss Press
Location: Brooklyn
Founded: 2021
Principal staff: Cat Fitzpatrick, editrix; Casey Plett, publisher
Full-time employees: None
New titles per year: 2–3
Backlist: 4
Lead title this year: Log Off: Why Posting and Politics (Almost) Never Mix by Katherine Cross (June)
What is the mission or focus of your press? LittlePuss Press is a feminist press run by two trans women. We believe in printing on paper, intensive editing, and throwing lots of parties.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? We were distributed by Small Press Distribution, which went belly-up with no warning and left us and hundreds of presses in the lurch, while also owing us plenty of money. We’ve been able to get by, we’re grateful to say, as a result of friends and colleagues stepping up and connecting us with alternative distributor options pretty quickly, and we’re still on Ingram as a result. But it really did knock us sideways, and it’s sort of pure luck it didn’t come for us at a worse time.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Keep your focus on the books themselves, making the best books you can, and don’t ever budge. As a publisher, a good two-step rubric is, “Could I stand the thought of living in a world where this book doesn’t exist?” and then, “Do I have to be the one to put it out?” The second question often demands some humility, but when the answer to both questions is yes, then drop it into fifth and give it your all.
Queen of Swords Press
Location: Minneapolis
Founded: 2017
Principal staff: Catherine Lundoff, publisher and editor in chief
Full-time employees: None
New titles per year: 3–7
Backlist: 16
Lead title this year: Death by Silver by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold (Apr.)
What is the mission or focus of your press? We publish fantasy, horror, and science fiction titleswith LGBTQ+ protagonists.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? We lost a lot of sales momentum in 2020. For a variety of reasons, we only put one title out that year, and 2021 felt a bit like starting over. Most of our usual bookselling events were canceled, on hiatus, or had moved online, which was another big hit to sales. So I doubled down on everything I could: virtual conventions, online reading series, outdoor events, small craft fairs, farmer’s markets, you name it, and we got back on track. We put three books out that year, gathering more award wins and nods, reviews and sales than we’d had up to that point. It was exhausting, but worth it.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Indie publishing is a long game, and persistence can really pay off. Rest when you can!
Street Noise Books
Location: Brooklyn
Founded: 2020
Principal staff: Liz Frances, publisher
Full-time employees: 1
New titles per year: 6–8
Backlist: 22
Lead title this year: Djuna: The Extraordinary Life of Djuna Barnes by Jon Macy (Oct.)
What is the mission or focus of your press? Street Noise publishes powerful graphic novels and memoirs—books that combine words and images to tell stories that can be vehicles for personal, community, and global change. Our graphic novels have a radical, intersectional feminist, queer, and inclusive vision, and we seek to provide a platform for the voices of marginalized people.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? The Covid pandemic certainly posed the biggest challenge, as supply chains were interrupted, manufacturing costs soared, and the creators’ lives were upended causing major delays in our publishing plan. We did our best to keep our focus on the big picture to keep it all in perspective.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Make sure you have a clear vision and a purpose for your press. It won’t be easy, but it can be the most rewarding thing you’ve ever done.
Tapioca Stories
Location: New York City
Founded: 2019
Principal staff: Yael Berstein, publisher and editor
Full-time employees: None
New titles per year: 4–6
Backlist: 9
Lead title this year: Marcelo, Martello, Marshmallow by Ruth Rocha, illus. by Ana Matsusaki, and trans. by Tal Goldfajn (June)
What is the mission or focus of your press? Tapioca Stories, a New York-based publishing house with Latin American soul, introduces young English readers to the finest Latin American children’s books, originally written in Spanish and Portuguese.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? Publishing translated picture books that are quite different from the books in the U.S. is challenging by itself. We try to find books that have the right balance of uniqueness but can still be accepted in by American readers. A good example is My Neighborhood, a beautiful book following a day in the life of Ms. Marta, this sweet old lady who goes around her neighborhood, where everyone knows her and many play an important role in her daily life. It’s a book about aging and the importance of community in this stage of life. The picture book is beautiful and relevant to everyone, but Ms. Marta drinks wine with her friends, and it’s not a scene you see in pictures books here. So we were uncertain about its acceptance here, but decided to take the risk, and are happy to see that readers of all ages truly enjoy this book.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Find a community of indie publishers that share your values. Share your experiences, learn from theirs, and collaborate when possible.
Third State Books
Location: San Francisco
Founded: 2022
Principal staff: Stephanie Lim, CEO; Charles Kim, publisher
Full-time employees: 3
New titles per year: 7–9
Backlist: None
Lead title this year: L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood by Anne Soon Choi (Nov.)
What is the mission or focus of your press? We are the only general-interest publisher in America dedicated to Asian American writers and stories.
What is one major challenge you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? One significant challenge we’ve encountered is the dearth of Asian Americans in book PR and marketing. As part of our mission, we try to hire AAPIs whenever we can, and there just aren’t a lot to choose from. We’ve been very fortunate to work with Jeffrey Yamaguchi, who has been wonderful. We’ve also had Mih-Ho Cha, who used to be a director of publicity for Putnam and Riverhead, give us strategic advice on our upcoming debut novel, Edison by Pallavi Sharma Dixit.
What is your top piece of advice for indie publishers just starting out? Work as hard as you can to connect with your distributor and sales reps, and give them what they need to sell you effectively. We are distributed by Publishers Group West/Ingram, and they’ve helped us understand how important it is to get as much metadata and other information as possible into databases to let the gatekeepers—the booksellers and librarians—know what is forthcoming from us.
To read more from our Independents Issue, click here.
This article has been updated with further information.
A version of this article appeared in the 04/22/2024 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: How to Succeed as an Indie Press