The Convenient Fiction of Small Press Publishing
Quit giving your words to others for pennies on the dollar
It seems there are literally a million small presses in the world today, and all of them want to publish your book. So much opportunity! So much art! And all of them are ready to put your novel out, your short story collection out, your latest poetry collection out, many of them without even reading what you’ve written to see if it’s worth a damn. Skeptical minds may ask, what’s the catch? Something seems off here. But writers line up like lemmings, more than willing to leap off the cliff, just for the “prestige” of being a “published author.”
Many of these presses charge a fee to look at your book. $20 here. $30 there. They have “reading periods” where they look for the “best work.” They have contests, that offer pretty decent sums of money to the “winning writer,” assuming they get enough submissions. Or they offer “manuscript feedback” where all they do is read the manuscript and then comment on it as to their “professional opinion” of whether it is ready to be published or not.
I’m not speaking as someone who has avoided falling prey to these publishing gimmicks. I’ve spent a small fortune trying to win contests. Trying to get my book “chosen” by one of these publishers, and then sent out into the world like a…
