8 Reasons Why Your Book Might Do Best at a Small Press

How Skipping the Big Five Could Make You a Bigger Success

Every time I get a message from a new potential client, one of the first things I ask is how they want to publish their book: self-publishing, traditional publishing, or small press publishing.

A lot of the time, authors aren’t clear on the differences—which is fine, I’m happy to explain! But more than anything else, what authors are unclear on is what I mean by small press publishing.

Which is such a shame, because small press publishing is a great option for a lot of authors. It has a lot of overlooked upsides, and can be a really good compromise between the strengths of self-publishing and traditional publishing.

So, what is small press publishing?

A small press publisher is, for our purposes, any publisher that isn’t owned by one of publishing’s Big Five—the five international companies that control over 80 percent of US trade publishing.

Small press publishing is also known as indie publishing. In fact, indie publishing is probably a more accurate title, because there are definitely non–Big Five publishers who publish a couple hundred titles and sell millions of dollars’ worth of books each year. (The CEO at one of my old jobs definitely argued that they were medium size, thank you very much!) But you can’t really go around calling it “indie publishing,” because then everyone misunderstands and thinks you mean “indie authors” and thus “self-publishing.” Whoops.

Terminology aside! Indie publishers are awesome, and here are some of the biggest reasons why you should seriously consider them as an option when publishing your book.

1. It’s easier to get published.

This is just the truth—and given the pretty merciless and overwhelming ordeal of getting published traditionally, this is one of small press publishing’s biggest selling points.

Getting published by one of the Big Five is hard, due to sheer numbers, gatekeeping, systemic barriers, sales expectations, and did I mention sheer numbers? In fact, it’s so difficult that my policy is to recommend to authors that they not pursue with traditional publishing unless they truly, actively, and specifically want to.

When you go to a small press, though, you get to be the big fish in a small pond. You might be competing against 60 manuscripts sent in that month instead of 6,000.

2. You often don’t need an agent!

This is a huge part of what makes it easier and faster to go through small press publishing.

With the Big Five, if you don’t have an agent, they won’t even open your submission. And finding for an agent can be just as difficult and time-consuming as finding a publisher. A lot of writers take years and years to clear this hurdle.

Luckily, because small presses aren’t as inundated by submissions (and because a lot of them have a pro-underdog ethos!), they often accept what’s called “unsolicited submissions,” where the author can submit their manuscript without going through an agent first.

Not all indie publishers accept unsolicited submissions, though, and some accept them only in certain genres, so it’s always important to check and follow the publisher’s submission guidelines.

And if you’re writing nonfiction, this is an extra good option, because publishers are a lot more likely to accept nonfiction books directly from the author. This is partly because a) nonfiction book proposals give the editors a lot more information to go off of, and b) generally, there are a lot more people trying to write and submit fiction books than nonfiction ones.

3. You and your book will get much more personal attention from editors.

Like I said, with small press publishing, you get to be the big fish in a little pond. The Big Five put out hundreds and hundreds of titles every year—and if you’re not already a huge name, you’re probably not getting much sales and marketing time at all.

With a small press, though, every title matters. They can’t afford to just publish a bunch of books and then wait and see what does well—they need every one of their titles to be as successful as possible. And that, my dear author, means more time and energy and resources for you.

4. They’ll keep actively promoting your books for years—unlike the Big Five.

The Big Five have hundreds of books to publish each year—so as soon as one season is over, all their reps are busy selling their next big titles, and anything that’s not still selling well is pretty much done.

Small presses actually have their sales teams regularly go out and promote books on their backlist—meaning books they published in previous years and seasons. After all, if you’re only publishing ten or twenty or sixty books a year, why would you not take advantage of the huge resource that is books you’ve published—gasp!—more than a year ago?

5. They are often more author-centric.

Small presses don’t have the huge profit margins or prestige that the Big Five do. But what they do have is editors who are really passionate about an individualized, book-by-book approach to publishing.

In part because of this, indie publishers often do a lot more work with authors than the Big Five will. Over the years, publishing has pushed more and more of what’s traditionally an in-house editor’s work onto agents and the author’s own resources. This is especially true at the Big Five: they only want to acquire manuscripts that are already at least 90% of the way there.

But writing a book is really hard! And there are a lot of authors out there whose books could be fantastic—but they’re only getting 70% or 80% of the way there on their own. I should know how great some of these books can be—I’ve worked with dozens of authors on exactly this sort of book!

Small presses are just a lot more likely to take on those books and help take the author go the rest of the way. In fact, several small presses I know have even created dedicated editing guides and resources to send to both signed and prospective authors.

And if nothing else, small press publishing is pro-underdog, because small press publishers are the underdog. They’re there because they love working with authors, not for their own prestige.

(Not that any of us would complain about a little prestige!)

6. You don’t have to do all your own sales and marketing.

Doing all of your own sales and marketing is truly one of the hardest parts about self-publishing, and for a lot of indie authors, it’s really stressful and takes up a lot of time. After all, being a writer doesn’t make you a natural marketer! There are plenty of self-pub authors who struggle to market their own books effectively—or at all.

And with the way tech moves these days, there’s so much to stay on top of. SEO, book reviews, ARCs, ad sales, thousands of outlets to submit to, and ever-changing algorithms that can make or break your sales. It’s enough to overwhelm just about anyone.

Small press publishing, like traditional publishing, lets you outsource most of that work to their teams of experts. And unlike in self-publishing, you also get to outsource the cost!

(Important note: If a publisher asks you to pay for any marketing, run. It’s almost certainly a scam.)

7. Many indie presses are highly specialized, so they often have better resources to promote books in your genre.

Speaking of not having to do your own sales and marketing!

In some ways, this is counterintuitive, because of course small press publishers don’t have the armies of sales reps that the Big Five command. But that means small presses have to make up for that by being highly resourceful, inventive, and specialized.

Here's an example: Say you’ve written an excellent quilting book, gotten multiple offers on it, and you’re trying to decide which publisher to go with. It can be easy to assume that it’s best to go with an offer from the Big Five, because they can get your book into so many more bookstores.

However, if you’re writing a quilting book, Barnes and Noble may not be where your core audience is. Or at least not most of it. After all, dedicated crafters and quilters—the people most likely to actually buy your book and be able to do the projects inside—don’t shop for sewing projects at bookstores. They go to craft stores and fabric stores—and that’s where they usually buy their buy books and magazines of patterns and projects.

If you go to a normal bookstore, maybe 3% of the customers who walk through those doors are quilters. (And yes, I did run some actual numbers on that, data from the US in 2020.) If you walk into a craft store? I guarantee that number is a lot higher.

So, what’s better: the Barnes and Noble general audience…or getting your book on the shelves of craft and fabric stores across the country, from major chains to small but formidable indie shops?

8. Small press publishers are excellent!

Okay, I’m super biased. But I’m not wrong! All of my in-house jobs have been with small press or independent publishers, so I know what I’m talking about when I tell you that there are a lot of lovely, brilliant, and extremely good editors at small press publishers.

And who knows—maybe one of them will be the editor for you.