The Small Press Publishing Handbook, Part 1 — Introduction

Hi folks. I’m back, with a new series of insights, ideas, best practices, “how-tos” and business plans, all intended to help with the seemingly-impossible task of successfully running a small publishing house in this crazy decade.

For starters, let’s look at the “big picture” and then zoom back in.

What is small press publishing?

For the purposes of this series, a “small press” is any kind of organisation that makes writing available to the public in a form currently recognised (and self-identified) as a book — whatever the physical or digital format — and has fewer than five full-time employees.

That last qualifier originated with the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and I instantly adopted it as part of my own definition. It helps separate the kind of operation we’re looking at from “independent” publishers, a term which refers to any publisher not wholly owned by the “big five” conglomerates. Bloomsbury, for example, whose most recent annual sales totalled £230million, starts most descriptions of their company with the phrase “independent publishing house”. Whatever help they might need (seemingly none!) is beyond the scope of this series.

So, let’s leave the phrase “independent publisher” behind, and at the same time, bid farewell to its hipster cousin — “indie publisher”. While this term often does refer to a small press, it is increasingly being expanded to encompass anyone who goes about their self-publishing with a bit of class (there’s a nice explanation here), and I see it moving further in that direction in the coming years.

While there should be a lot to interest self-publishers in this series of articles — and indeed, any author who wants to be a touch more clued-up about the publishing process — they are not the intended audience. That community is increasingly well-served by the likes of Reedsy and Joanna Penn, whereas there’s still a significant dearth of information online for the small press crowd.

Why become a small press publisher?

If you’ve sought out this article, you have likely already started your own small press, or are thinking about it. For the few of you who haven’t, running a small press is one of the most exciting, meaningful and rewarding pursuits out there for someone passionate about books — that’s the romantic explanation, anyway, and it is largely true. Imagine watching a shelf fill up with books you have personally brought into the world, eager readers queuing up to hand over £10 notes at a launch event, or walking into a new bookshop in a strange city and spotting titles you personally have published. It can happen, and as I hope these articles will show, it doesn’t have to be a miserable slog/struggle (though a certain amount of hard work will always be required).

Our world right now has an endless supply of authors, and a not-insignificant number of unpublished authors with real talent, great material and an enthusiastic readership waiting in the wings. They don’t have publishing deals because the ratio of professional publishers to authors is still something like 1:1000 — there just aren’t enough “slots” to go around. By dabbling in the small press world with the slightest shred of diligence, effectiveness and responsibility, you can help to even those odds, and make dozens of writers’ most deeply-held dreams come true in the process.

Finally, to look at the question pragmatically (which will be a continuing theme of the series), any financial guru will tell you that passive income is one of the secrets to wealth. One way to generate passive income is through royalties from intellectual property; as a publisher, as your titles add up, so can this stream of income — and the sky is the limit. All those big publishers started somewhere. I’m not saying this series of articles will help you get rich (and if so, it certainly won’t be quick) but if you go about your small press publishing sensibly and, yes, pragmatically, it should only be a boost to your bank balance and never leave you significantly out of pocket.

Who is writing this series, and why?

I’m Jamie McGarry, and I founded Valley Press in 2008 as an English Literature undergraduate in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, UK. Between 2009 and 2022, I oversaw the publication of more than 200 titles and the growth of the company to a six-figure turnover, with seven staff on the payroll at the absolute peak.

I’ve “been there, done that, got the t-shirt”, lost everything but the t-shirt, bounced back stronger — several times, even — and am now here to help you benefit from all that hard-won experience. I am the author of a previous series of articles titled “Small Press Publishing for Profit” (I won’t link to them here, stick with this updated one), and a handful of others on this platform about half a decade ago, which still receive a lot of reads — 100 a week is not uncommon. I stopped writing on this topic due to the growth of Valley Press and becoming a father, but I’ve come back now partly out of guilt that those 100 people don’t have anything more thorough and sophisticated to turn to. I also want to get all my publishing knowledge down on “paper” and preserved for the ages, before I start forgetting it — and while it’s still relevant, of course.

Now what?

Now, you move onto part two, which features advice on naming your small press, how to produce a usable logo, and three cash-generating ideas to get things up and running.

You can subscribe to my Medium account via email if you’d particularly like to keep up to date; the button for that is on my profile, somewhere. I’m not sure yet how regularly I’ll be able to add to the series — it’ll be a long-term project, but one I absolutely intend to see through to the finish.

If you have any requests, questions or comments about any part of the series, or small press publishing in general, you can reply via this platform or email me on contact@jamiemcgarry.com. One of the main reasons I’m writing this on Medium and not as a book (despite spending my entire working life cheerleading for books!) is to collect live feedback, and allow readers to shape the direction and content of the series as it progresses.

Thanks in advance for your help with that, and for reading this far — see you in part two.