Things to Consider When Submitting to a Small Press

By Sebastian Vice

Small presses, like us, are wonderful in certain ways. For this post, I want you pretend your goal is to be a professional writer. Meaning, your hope is to make a full time living, or at least a decent supplemental income. This will likely mean you’ll produce a full length novel once a year. I say novel, because unless you’re already massively successful like Stephen King, big publishing houses aren’t interested in novellas or short story collections. There are exceptions, of course, but those are rare.

And I want to say upfront: it’s absolutely possible, and plausible, to make a living as a writer. It’s in fashion to say that nobody makes it as living as a writer. However, if you look at the statistics of people who consistently pump out books (one a year or every other year), we see a picture forming. To illustrate, imagine 100 people with good writing and publishing habits. Around 10 will go on to be wildly successful. And about 10 will flop. The chances you’ll land in either side of that bell curve is low. The probability you’ll land somewhere in the middle of the bell curve is high. This might mean you only make 20K a year. Or it could mean you make 70K a year. For some, it takes one book to put them on the map. For others, it takes 10. My point is: if you stick at it, and are sincere in making writing a career, you’ll do it. But it might take time. It might take 10 years, and 10 books. While you may not be able to quit your day job, perhaps you could drastically reduce whatever soul sucking position you have.

With that out of the way, let’s soldier on.

In my opinion, you should go with a small press (like us) if and when:

You only have one book in you, or don’t wish to make a career out of writing

You have a novella

You have a short story collection

You have a poetry collection

You don’t wish to go through the agent slog.

As I said above, with rare exceptions, major publishing houses (the ones that require agents), want novels. Period. It’s a sad state of affairs one can’t make a living being a poet, or short story writer, etc. Truth be told, my initial dream was to just write short stories until I ended up in the dirt. I love, love, love the format. And I still pen short stories, and will still put out collections. But I have no illusions these collections will sell more than a dozen, maybe if i’m lucky, a hundred copies (I do it for the love of the game—and so should you). And I think you’ll find major publishers who do put out short story collections tend to meet one of two criteria. (1) Many of the stories have won awards or made a massive impact. (2) The author is a very successful novelist, and it’s a safe bet to take on a collection.

For reasons I can’t divine, the increasingly diminishing population of readers aren’t interested in short stories, or poetry collections. To highlight the weirdness, imagine if most people only listen to concept albums, but nothing else. What is a regular album except the musical equivalent of a short story collection? Novellas are a bit more popular, I think, because they strike that sweet spot between full length novels and short stories. Hence, if you’re burned out with massive chonkers, a novella is a great palette cleanser. And, if you’re like me, trained in the short format, a novella is a good way to step up to a longer format.

If you have a novella, poetry collection, or short story collection, small presses can work wonders for you (and, potentially, launch a career as a novelist). To be clear! There are many cases when a novel broke out from a small press. That said, those presses were usually well established, with a good reputation, and a decent amount of capital. Most small presses break even if they do it right. Few of us are eating big off what we do.

I started this press with Paige Johnson with the following ethos in the back of my mind: we want to look out for the best interests of our authors. We want to be as fair as we can to them. And, we want to do cool shit. We want to take the stuff other places might look down on. Fuck trends. Fuck marketability. Give us cool, fucked up shit.

We will never discourage you from submitting a novel to us (WE ARE CLOSED TO SUBS RIGHT NOW—I say that in all caps because some people aren’t consulting the site before submitting). That said, I’d encourage you to consider whether you might be better served by the big dicks in New York, or if you have the skills to self publish. Maybe you wouldn’t, or couldn’t. And that’s fine.

I don’t want to shoot the press in the foot, but we also aren’t in the business of fucking authors (we’ll leave that to Amazon and IngramSpark), but if you possess the required skills to self publish a novel? That’s your better opinion. If you have the skills, and patience to query agents? Do that.

There’s no one right path. And anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit.