Wikipedia Deep Dive

Small press

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In a world dominated by publishing giants like Random House and Hachette—companies whose annual revenues dwarf the gross domestic product of small nations—there exists a scrappy, stubbornly persistent ecosystem of literary underdogs. These are the small presses: thousands of tiny operations, often run by just a handful of passionate people, that collectively represent about half of all books published in the United States.

The timing couldn't be better to understand what small presses actually do.

Hagfish, a small press founded by Julia Ringo and Naomi Huffman, just had their debut publication—To Smithereens by Rosalyn Drexler—named one of the New York Times's "100 Notable Books of 2025." This is precisely the kind of thing small presses do: they find voices that the major publishers overlooked, nurture them, and occasionally watch them explode into mainstream recognition.

What Exactly Is a Small Press?

The definition sounds deceptively simple: a small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain threshold, or one that publishes fewer than a certain number of titles per year. But this straightforward definition hides a remarkable diversity.

There are roughly 100,000 small presses operating today. Add in the broader category of "independent presses"—publishers that aren't owned by multinational corporations—and that number balloons to approximately one million. The distinction matters: an independent press might be quite large in terms of revenue, but what makes it independent is autonomy. The people running it get to decide what books to publish, and the business lives or dies based on whether those choices resonate with readers.

Small presses operate on a different logic than their corporate cousins.

When a major publisher considers a book, they're essentially running a financial calculation: Will this book sell enough copies to justify the significant overhead of a large organization? Can we move 50,000 units? 100,000? A book that might sell "only" 5,000 copies—even a brilliant, important book—often doesn't make the cut.

Small presses, with their leaner operations and lower overhead, can make different bets. A book that would be a catastrophic failure for Random House might be a modest success for a small press operating out of someone's spare bedroom.

The Art of Filling Niches

This economic reality shapes what small presses publish. They tend to fill the niches that larger publishers ignore—not because those niches aren't valuable, but because they're too small to interest companies optimized for scale.

Consider regional titles. A book about the history of a specific neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, might fascinate 3,000 readers intensely but leave the rest of the world indifferent. A major publisher can't justify the effort. A Portland-based small press absolutely can.

Genre fiction offers another example. While mainstream publishers have robust science fiction and fantasy divisions, they often focus on books with broad commercial appeal. Small presses can pursue narrower slices: solarpunk (optimistic environmental science fiction), LitRPG (stories structured like video games), or bizarro fiction (surrealist horror comedy that defies easy categorization).

Poetry occupies a special place in the small press ecosystem.

The economics of poetry are brutal. Most poetry collections sell fewer than 1,000 copies. Major publishers have largely abandoned the form, leaving it almost entirely to small presses, university presses, and self-published authors. If you've read a new poetry collection in the last decade, there's an excellent chance a small press published it.

Not Vanity, Not Self-Publishing, Not Printing

To understand what small presses are, it helps to understand what they're not.

Small presses are not vanity presses. A vanity press (also called a subsidy press) charges authors money to publish their books. The business model is essentially: the author pays, the press prints, and whatever happens next is the author's problem. Vanity presses make their money from authors, not from readers.

Small presses work the opposite way. They make money by selling books to readers. The press takes on the financial risk, and if the book fails to sell, the press absorbs the loss—not the author. Authors receive royalties, just as they would from a major publisher.

Small presses are also not printers. A printer will reproduce whatever you give them, with minimal selectivity—if you can pay, they'll print. Printers don't acquire books, don't edit them, don't market them, and don't distribute them.

A small press does all of these things. They read submissions (often thousands per year), select the manuscripts they believe in, work with authors on editing, design covers, market the finished books, and handle distribution. They are publishers in the fullest sense of the word—just smaller ones.

The distinction might seem academic, but it matters enormously to authors. When a small press accepts your manuscript, they're not just agreeing to print it. They're betting their time, money, and reputation on your work.

The Micro-Press: Even Smaller Still

Below small presses exists an even tinier category: the micro-press.

If a small press might publish a few dozen titles per year, a micro-press might publish one or two. Print runs can be minuscule—sometimes as few as 50 copies of a single book. Many micro-presses operate as hobbies or part-time endeavors because they simply don't generate enough revenue to constitute a full-time job.

The chapbook represents the micro-press's quintessential product. A chapbook is a small booklet, typically under 40 pages, often featuring poetry or short fiction. The form has a long history—Renaissance-era chapbooks circulated ballads, political tracts, and sensational stories to readers who couldn't afford bound books.

Today's chapbooks serve a different purpose: they allow emerging writers to establish a track record, give experimental work a physical form, and let publishers test the waters with minimal financial risk.

In Canada, the small press world has developed specific conventions around print runs. The standard for a chapbook is 300 copies; for a spine-bound book, 500 copies or more. These aren't arbitrary numbers—they're thresholds that make publishers eligible for grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Government support, channeled through these minimums, has shaped an entire publishing ecosystem.

A History of Rebellion and Craft

Small presses as we know them emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century, distinguishing themselves from the "jobbing printers" who had previously handled small-scale publishing work. The roots trace back to the Arts and Crafts movement, particularly the Kelmscott Press founded by William Morris in 1891.

Morris was reacting against industrialization. Mass-produced books had become cheap and ugly, he felt, sacrificing craftsmanship for efficiency. The Kelmscott Press produced lavishly beautiful volumes—hand-set type, handmade paper, intricate decorations—that were works of art in themselves. This philosophy, that small-scale publishing could pursue excellence rather than just efficiency, became foundational to the small press ethos.

The technology mattered too. As commercial printing became increasingly mechanized and expensive, amateur printers found they could produce decent-quality work using small letterpress machines. Later, practical lithography (a printing technique that uses the chemical repulsion between oil and water to transfer images) made small-run publishing even more accessible.

But the real golden age came in the 1960s and 1970s.

This period saw an unprecedented proliferation of small and independent publishers, driven by what historians call the "Mimeo Revolution." The mimeograph machine—essentially a low-cost duplicating device that could reproduce typed pages cheaply and quickly—put publishing power into the hands of anyone willing to learn the slightly messy process of cranking out copies.

The cultural moment mattered as much as the technology. The 1960s counterculture was suspicious of established institutions, including established publishers. Why wait for some New York editor to validate your work when you could publish it yourself, distribute it through independent bookstores and mail order, and build a readership directly?

Poetry flourished in this environment. So did political writing, experimental fiction, and work by marginalized voices that mainstream publishing had long ignored.

The Digital Revolution

Every technological shift in publishing history has reshaped the small press landscape, and the digital revolution has been no exception.

Print-on-demand technology, which emerged in the early 2000s and matured rapidly thereafter, fundamentally changed the economics of small publishing. Traditional printing required large minimum orders—you might need to print 1,000 copies of a book to get a reasonable per-unit cost. If the book didn't sell, you were stuck with boxes of inventory gathering dust in your garage.

Print-on-demand eliminates this risk. Books are printed individually, as orders come in. A small press can publish a book with essentially no upfront inventory cost, printing copies only when customers actually want them.

Digital typesetting and design tools lowered another barrier. Setting type and designing book covers once required expensive equipment and specialized skills. Now, a publisher with a laptop and Adobe software (or even free alternatives like Canva and Scribus) can produce professional-looking books.

The internet transformed marketing and distribution. A small press in rural Montana can sell books to readers worldwide through their website, Amazon, or specialized distributors like IngramSpark. The geographic isolation that once limited small publishers' reach has largely evaporated.

Ebooks created yet another option. Electronic publishing has essentially zero marginal cost—once you've created the ebook file, you can sell an unlimited number of copies without printing, shipping, or storing anything physical.

The 2008 financial crisis, paradoxically, accelerated small press growth. As major publishers contracted, laid off staff, and became more risk-averse, opportunities opened for smaller players. Writers who might once have held out for a contract with a major house found willing partners in small presses. Readers discovered that some of the most interesting new voices weren't coming from the big publishers at all.

Literary Recognition

Small presses have always played a role in discovering important writers. The history of literature is filled with authors who were first published by small presses before achieving mainstream recognition.

In Australia, this pattern has become especially pronounced in recent years. As major publishers have retreated from literary fiction—focusing instead on more commercially reliable genres—small presses have stepped into the gap. The result has been remarkable: small press publications have won some of Australia's most prestigious literary prizes, including the Stella Prize, the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, and the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

The trend is measurable. In the years leading up to 2017, researchers noticed a strong upward trend in the number of small press titles shortlisted for major Australian literary awards. The traditional path—where writers start at small presses and graduate to major publishers—has begun to reverse. Some writers are choosing to stay with small presses even after achieving success, valuing the closer relationships and greater creative freedom.

The Small Press Network, headquartered at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne, now represents more than 140 publishers across Australia and New Zealand. Its members range from tiny operations to established names like Scribe and Wakefield Press. The organization describes independent publishing as "a vital component of Australian literary culture"—not a minor niche or a stepping stone, but an essential element of how literature gets made and distributed.

Small Presses and Political Change

The story of Kenyan small presses illustrates how these institutions can serve purposes far beyond commerce.

Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963, and the decade that followed saw a flourishing of small press activity. These weren't just businesses trying to turn a profit—they were platforms for a newly independent nation to examine itself.

Small press publications tackled subjects that mainstream or international publishers might have avoided: urban corruption, the complicated legacy of colonial rule, the tensions of modernization. They gave voice to perspectives that had been marginalized under British control.

Universities played a crucial role. The University of Nairobi, in particular, became a center of literary experimentation. Student publications served as proving grounds for writers who would later achieve international recognition.

Consider Zuka: A Journal of East African Creative Writing, founded in 1967 by the East African Literature Bureau. This small publication provided early platforms for writers like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, who would become one of Africa's most celebrated authors, as well as Taban Lo Liyong, Okot p'Bitek, and the Scottish writer and scholar Angus Calder.

The pattern repeats across postcolonial contexts worldwide. When countries gain independence, small presses often emerge to publish the literature that the previous colonial power had suppressed or ignored. They become not just commercial enterprises but instruments of cultural self-determination.

The Passionate Economics

Small press publishing is not, generally speaking, a path to riches.

Profit margins are narrow, sometimes nonexistent. Many small press operators hold day jobs, running their presses as labors of love during evenings and weekends. The joke in the industry is that the best way to make a small fortune in small press publishing is to start with a large fortune.

And yet people keep doing it.

Why? Because small presses serve purposes that can't be measured in profit margins alone. They disseminate literature that would otherwise never reach readers—work too experimental, too niche, or too uncommercial for larger publishers to touch. They nurture writers at the beginning of their careers, taking chances on unknown names. They preserve literary traditions and minority languages. They keep particular genres alive when mainstream interest wanes.

Crowdfunding has emerged as one solution to the economic challenges. Platforms like Kickstarter allow small presses to gauge interest before committing to a print run. If enough readers pledge support, the book gets published; if not, no one loses money. This model connects authors with readers directly, building communities around specific books and publishers.

Some small presses have found sustainable models by going upmarket rather than competing on price. Fine art books, limited editions, beautifully designed collector's items—these can command premium prices from readers who value craftsmanship and exclusivity. A small press might print 200 copies of a letterpress poetry collection on handmade paper, sell them for fifty dollars each, and actually turn a profit.

The Ecosystem Endures

Despite—or perhaps because of—the constant technological and economic upheaval in publishing, small presses continue to thrive.

They adapt. When new technologies emerge, small presses are often quicker to experiment than their larger, more bureaucratic competitors. When markets shift, small presses can pivot faster, exploring new niches while major publishers are still holding committee meetings.

They persist. The passion that drives most small press publishers—the genuine love of literature, the desire to see particular voices in print—sustains them through economic conditions that would make purely profit-motivated businesses fold.

They matter. In an age of algorithmic recommendation and bestseller-dominated retail displays, small presses remain one of the most reliable ways for unusual, challenging, or simply uncommercial work to find its way into readers' hands.

The next time you discover a remarkable book by an author you've never heard of, published by a company you don't recognize, consider what it took to get that book to you. Somewhere, probably working out of a small office or spare bedroom, a publisher read that manuscript, believed in it, and bet their time and money that you would want to read it too.

More often than not, that publisher was a small press.