In today’s publishing climate, it’s not unusual for established authors formerly published by large houses to move to smaller presses. The reasons for the exodus are many, though principally it’s that large publishers are jettisoning mid-list authors in favor of bigger names, many of them influencers and celebrities. The sizable advances they receive reduce the available support for writers who earn the houses smaller immediate returns. Much ink has been spilled bemoaning this shifting landscape, but is it always a compromise for mid-list authors to segue to independent presses? Might there be advantages beyond publishing the next book?
Some authors who’ve made the switch seem genuinely sanguine. At recent book events, I’ve heard them sounding downright giddy. As someone whose five books have only been published by small presses, I can only say, “Welcome!” I’ve had enjoyable and successful (by my definition) experiences working with indie presses and am delighted that writers I respect are coming to know them as well. But there are obvious downsides to publishing with a smaller house.
To learn more about the experience of going from big to indie, I reached out to five authors who have published with both. Each has a unique publishing journey, but they share similar assessments of the pros and cons of the two distinctly different experiences.
Lynne Hugo, award-winning author most recently of the novels The Language of Kin, A Matter of Mercy, and Mothers of Fate, has published novels and nonfiction for decades. When asked how many, she replied, “something like thirteen, but I’ve lost count.” Many have been with what’s known as the Big Five, though she was with them before there were just five. Her last novel, however, came out from Amphorae Publishing Group, a woman-owned and woman-run house in Missouri that publishes fewer than ten books a year.
I asked Lynne why the switch. As she described, “Everything is based on the track record of your last book. If it did really well, then you receive an entirely different kind of attention. You receive the benefit of being at a larger house, which is marketing money. If your last book did only so-so, you are basically moving down into the chopped-liver category.”
Laura Zigman, author of six novels with large houses and one forthcoming in May from the midsize indie press Blackstone Publishing, put it this way: “It’s just really hard to stay with a big house.”
“Many factors influence the success or failure of a book with a big house. Often they have little to do with the quality of the book.”
Many factors influence the success or failure of a book with a big house. Often they have little to do with the quality of the book. Lynne’s editor of many years was let go, she was assigned a new editor who wasn’t familiar with her genre, and before long the publicist was out, too. Her book was orphaned, left without a champion, and it faltered. With her next book, she and her agent assessed the situation and decided to seek out a smaller house, hoping to find greater stability.
In some cases, a larger house loses interest if an author changes style or genre. According to Laura, it’s hard for a larger house to pivot in their marketing approach: “They know how to sell what they know how to sell.” In addition to previously being published exclusively by larger houses, she worked in PR at Random House for a decade. “It’s easy to criticize the big houses,” she says, “we all do it, but having been an insider, I do have a lot of compassion for how hard it is to sell anything. And, honestly, it’s tough out there to sell your books anywhere.”
Steve Yarbrough, award-winning author of a dozen books, said, “You’re going to get one pretty good shot, and many things can influence how it goes that are far beyond your control.” Some years ago, one of his novels came out from Knopf on the same day they published a novel that would go on to win that year’s National Book Award. Consequently, Steve’s book just didn’t receive the attention from his publisher that it might have.
Aimee Liu has been publishing with large houses since her twenties, before Harper & Row became HarperCollins. She’s the author of three novels from Grand Central Publishing, and her most recent came out from Red Hen Press. She has also authored and ghostwritten nonfiction with large and small presses. Over the years, she has learned to vary her projects in order to secure contracts. In one instance, she sold a nonfiction book to the same editor whom she had worked with in the past on fiction: “The house wanted things to work out between us. They were rooting for me, even if they didn’t have the confidence that moment in my fiction.” Aimee’s professionalism as a writer, seeking out alternatives when needed, is clear from her variety of books and also her popular Substack, MFA Lore, on the craft and business of writing.
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For fifteen years, while working on other books, she was writing a novel she felt passionately about. When it was finally finished, her agent sent it to the big houses, but at that same moment a similar book was being shopped around to the same editors. The two books, set in an obscure moment of WWII history that had never been written about, seemed to cancel each other out and both were rejected. Aimee ended up publishing Glorious Boy with Red Hen Press. With her nonfiction, she had a bestseller with Gaining from Grand Central Publishing, but her subsequent books on eating disorders didn’t find a home with a larger house and came out instead from Shambhala Publications and Open Road Distribution.
Some authors decide to leave the Big Five because they’ve grown tired of receiving unenthusiastic support. PR and marketing budgets for mid-list authors have shrunk. I know several mid-list authors who only realized close to their publication dates that their large houses had barely arranged any events or media. The authors regretted not hiring freelance PR or marketing help. The end results are books that languish and underperform, making it even harder for the author to sell their next book to a big house.
Bestselling author Randy Susan Meyers reassessed her situation after publishing five novels with Big Five houses. She realized she no longer had the patience for the long wait for her next book. “As I become older, time is more important to me,” she said. “Enjoying my work is more important. With my agent, going through the experience of being on submission to the big houses, the process would be slow for a variety of reasons. I added on how many years it would take for that book to come out once I even got the contract, because it’s at least eighteen months to three years before your book will come out with the Big Five, so I started researching alternatives myself.”
Randy landed on Koehler Books, a small, fast-growing press in Virginia, which offered to traditionally publish her most recent novel, The Many Mothers of Ivy Puddingstone. (Koehler offers both traditional and hybrid publishing.) Not only would it come out faster than it might have with a larger house, but she would also have more author input. She was impressed by her conversations with her new potential publisher, and when she received initial editorial comments from her future editor, Becky Hilliker, “her take on my manuscript was perfect. I have found that everybody I’ve worked with at Koehler, every single one of them, is honest, to the point of shocking me. Working with a large house, it was often a convoluted process. With Koehler, they’re honest about what they can and can’t do. I’ve worked with a lot of editors who have been smart, but Becky is very smart, and she didn’t try to set up a hierarchical structure between us. You’re partners in producing the novel.”
All the authors I spoke to agreed that the collaborative nature of working with a smaller house is a definite plus. As Steve said about Unbridled Books, where he published his eleventh book, The Unmade World, “I knew from the get-go that they were moving heaven and earth to the best of their ability. They were all in. That’s the coolest feeling.” The Unmade World won the Massachusetts Book Award in 2019. It was up against books from larger houses that year and the win was meaningful not just for Steve, but for the house. It was, in part, a recognition of his long and supportive relationship with his editor, Greg Michalson, with whom he’d published his first novel almost twenty years earlier.
Based on my own positive experiences with Unbridled Books for my first two novels, with Press 53 for a story collection, Regal House for a historical novel, and now Koehler Books for my forthcoming contemporary novel, I can agree that the people who run small presses work overtime to help their books succeed. No doubt, the same can be said of those at the Big Five, but small presses are more collaborative, so authors don’t feel left in the dark about the process. We see how the sausage is made and become wiser about our role in helping our books succeed.
This type of collegiality extends to fellow authors at small presses. Aimee Liu described how Red Hen Press fosters community: “I think one thing that they do well, and I think a number of other small presses do, is that they introduce you to their other authors who have books coming out. They help to organize you, so you set up joint book tours. You have book events with two or three or four authors, all with books coming out at the same time, and there’s strength in numbers. If you have a book event with four authors, and they all invite their friends, before you know it, you’ve got thirty or fifty people in the audience.”
“Can a small press help a book stand out in today’s oversaturated market with anything like the success of the larger houses?”
It’s clear that these authors are having a good time with their collaborative and hardworking publishers and editors at the smaller houses. But a key question remains: Can a small press help a book stand out in today’s oversaturated market with anything like the success of the larger houses?
First, there’s the problem of distribution. Any small press suffers from not having the sales force and distribution abilities of a larger house. In order for a book to be placed in bookstores, the publisher needs to accept returns of unsold books. Some small presses can handle the expense, but many can’t, and that distinction makes all the difference to an author trying to get their books onto bookstore shelves.
There’s no question that small press books have greater hurdles to overcome to reach readers. Aimee’s novel with Red Hen came out right at the start of the pandemic. The copies of her books were two weeks late in arriving from the printer and weren’t available at her launch. As she put it, even without COVID shutdown challenges, “small presses are at the bottom of the pile of printers’ priorities.”
The algorithms on Amazon and other online retail bookstores don’t prioritize small presses and the books suffer from a lack of marketing muscle. Aimee spoke about the greater advantage larger houses have in terms of marketing. Her forthcoming ghostwritten book is receiving lots of support from her Big Five publisher, illustrating that “much of the marketing machinery is below the surface. Most authors never see it or know about it. In my experience, I don’t think most indie publishers know about it either, or certainly they don’t have the tools to accomplish it. If a major publisher wants to make your book a bestseller and they believe in it, they’re going to pay marketing money for all of the Amazon ads to reach Amazon readers, influencers, and reviewers. They have this huge toolbox. Teams of people at the major publishing houses know how Amazon ads and Facebook ads and all of those things work, and they can iterate from moment to moment to get the maximum bang for their buck.”
Based on Aimee’s experience with more than one big-budget book, she thinks that “any writer is crazy if they don’t first try a Big Five house.”
With small press books often overlooked, even by trade publications, such as Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, many authors choose to hire freelance PR and/or marketing teams to pitch their books. Large houses may not welcome this arrangement, but the smaller houses are eager to work with PR professionals to supplement whatever they’re able to accomplish themselves. But even with author-paid PR and marketing support, books from small presses generally don’t sell anything like the numbers of those from larger houses.
Yet, according to the authors I’ve spoken with, sales are only one of the factors they consider when thinking about their situations. A congenial experience with their house and acceptance from fellow authors and readers also matter. As more and more established authors make the shift to indies, I can’t help thinking that the way those houses are perceived is changing, with greater respect afforded to them.
Laura sounds excited about her experience with Blackstone: “I just think it’s really fun to have a new way to be published. It’s a bit of a fresh start. Ten, fifteen years ago, if you said to someone who might not have been taken by a big house, ‘Why don’t you try smaller presses?’ you could end a friendship. People would be offended. Now, it’s really, ‘We’re going because we want to go,’ and it feels the way publishing used to feel. They’re excited to have you on their list. They’re working with you. They’re really open.”
With small but enthusiastic teams behind each indie press book, authors seem poised to redefine what success means in publishing today. With each of my books, I’ve felt increasingly respected by my local Boston writing community, while also building a broader connection to fellow writers and readers nationally. I may not have had the apparatus of a larger house to help get out the word, but I’ve hustled for each of my publications. Authors with small houses have no illusions that someone else will do the work of spreading the word. We roll up our sleeves and, for the most part, find plenty of satisfaction in the joint venture with our small press.
Virginia Pye’s fifth novel, Marriage and Other Monuments, is forthcoming in February from Koehler Books. She is fiction editor at Pangyrus literary journal and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.