The Big Five Aren’t Enough: Supporting Small Presses Supports Communities

This past year, similar the remainder of the bookish world, I sat enthralled by each update from the proceedings wherever the U.S. Department of Justice fought to artifact Penguin Random House’s acquisition of Simon & Schuster, different subordinate of the Big Five. As I work updates astir the trial, I kept getting flashbacks from erstwhile I was moving for a assemblage property and archetypal heard astir the negotiations for the Penguin–Random House merger backmost successful 2012. But this time, I became distracted by thing other coming retired of the trial: a disdain that large publishing executives had for smaller presses. 

I retrieve erstwhile I archetypal work the article by Margot Atwell, Executive Director and Publisher of Feminist Press, discussing however witnesses successful the proceedings kept referring to indie presses arsenic “farm teams.” Atwell wrote, “Referring to autarkic publication publishers arsenic ‘farm teams’ implies that they are small-time, amateur, and lower-quality than the monolithic firm publishers that predominate the publishing landscape. It besides implies that indie presses beryllium solely to make earthy endowment to the standards of Big 4 oregon 5 publishers — and for their benefit.”

Now don’t get maine wrong; I emotion books from large presses. Some of my favourite books travel from imprints similar Knopf, Scribner, and Little, Brown. But large publishing isn’t the lone spot wherever fantabulous books are made. Smaller presses supply a spot for a batch of books large publishing doesn’t privation to instrumentality a hazard on, similar books successful translation, experimental works, and books by authors from marginalized identities. Smaller presses cognize their communities and put successful the lit that they specialize in, making a mode for a wider scope of books to beryllium published.

As a bookish idiosyncratic successful the South, acold distant from the hustle and bustle of the publishing houses based successful New York City, I enactment with a batch of fantastic assemblage and indie presses that people unthinkable books featuring a divers scope of titles crossed the board. One of my favourite books of the past fewer years, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw, came retired from West Virginia University Press (WVU Press). Philyaw’s publication was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Tessa Thompson and HBO Max will produce a bid based connected the abbreviated communicative collection.

When I talked to Derek Krissoff, the Director of WVU Press, connected my podcast Read Appalachia, helium described his position connected WVU Press’s attack arsenic a “Community Publisher” and however they enactment with its assemblage to archer stories from West Virginia and broader Appalachia. 

“We’re responsive to the communities wherever we are rooted,” Krissoff said. “We person perspectives that are grounded successful the places wherever we are. We effort to marque a way for radical to get into publishing enactment from these places extracurricular of large cities.”

Here successful my hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina, Hub City Press, a nonprofit indie press, puts retired immoderate of my favourite indie property books, similar The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels and Whiskey & Ribbons by Leesa Cross-Smith. Many of these stories absorption connected the scenery of the American South, profoundly connecting storytelling with an aggravated consciousness of place. Their books propulsion backmost against stereotypes that overmuch of the remainder of the state holds astir the South. Much of their database includes Southern poets similar Alabama’s Poet Laureate, Ashley M. Jones, and MacArthur Fellow J. Drew Lanham.

When I talked to Hub City Press Director Meg Reid connected Read Appalachia, she described the value of reasoning astir wherever our books travel from and however our dollars mightiness amended enactment supporting smaller publishing communities:

“People request to decentralize successful their ain minds wherever their books travel from. They request to person amended acquisition astir publishing systems and past bargain books and question retired books from much publishers…It’s conscionable a existent shame that radical are speechmaking conscionable truthful overmuch that comes done the aforesaid main office, you know, is being processed done that aforesaid steadfast oregon astatine slightest that aforesaid conglomerate oregon mates conglomerates. Cause erstwhile you look astatine autarkic presses and smaller presses, they are truthful overmuch much local. They are truthful overmuch much supportive of the communities that they are in.”

University and autarkic presses supply communities a mode for our stories to beryllium told — cultivated, edited, published, and marketed — by radical who recognize the nuances of our civilization and position of the world. Without these presses investing successful our communities, lit would suffer overmuch of its diverseness arsenic large publishers shy distant from taking a accidental connected these authors.

Whether they’re from a large corp that publishes thousands of titles a twelvemonth oregon from a tiny property that publishes 8 titles a year, large books travel from truthful galore antithetic kinds of publishing houses. So it’s a mistake to presumption tiny presses arsenic conscionable a spot to trial retired titles to spot if they volition “make it” successful the large league. Smaller presses are unsocial extensions of their communities, committed to telling their authors’ stories.

I deliberation Meg Reid said it best: “Imagine the bully that tin hap if determination are much publishers representing much radical and publishing books that are much honorable to people’s lived experiences due to the fact that they are connected the crushed surviving with them.”

Want to work immoderate enactment from tiny press? Try these must-read communicative collections and anthologies, immoderate of our favourite indie nonfiction from 2022, and this roundup of tiny property books from 2020.