Try something different….
It’s no secret that the publishing industry (and “industry” is indeed the right word) is under threat these days. People simply aren’t reading as they used to, either as much or as deeply. Only around one in six American adults reads books for fun.
Yet book publishers continue to chug along, placing their bets on popular genres and contributing mightily to social media buzz. The Big Five publishing houses in the U.S., and their multifarious imprints, do publish serious books on a fairly regular basis—prestige is still a selling point, in spite of everything. Yet a substantial majority of the constant stream of new books can be slotted into one formula or another.
That’s where independent (read: small) publishers come in. The indies will tell you to seek out their titles if you want to read what’s really innovative, what’s really important, what really matters. Naturally they do. The thing is, they’re often not far off the mark.
This short intro to U.S. indie publishing will look at seven small houses and some of their representative titles, in an attempt to provide a brief survey of what you might find behind the bestseller lists.
Deep Vellum founded in 2013, is a non-profit publishing house and also the country’s largest publisher of literature in translation, some 90 titles in its first five years. The house is based in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas, Texas, hence the punning name. There is a Deep Vellum bookstore in Dallas as well. In addition to translated books, this indie now publishes fiction, poetry, nonfiction and photography books. And their books can pack a real punch. The novel Schattenfroh: A Requiem, by the German writer Michael Lentz and translated by Max Lawton, has been recently reviewed in the New York Times and the New York Review of Books. The Times called it “one of the great, and greatly demanding, literary pleasures of the year,” and it was greeted in the New York Review as a “bleak, confounding and finally brilliant doorstopper of a novel.”
As if this were not enough, Deep Vellum acquired Dalkey Archive Press in 2020—a renowned indie in its own right. One wonders if the venomous governor of Texas and his right-wing henchmen in the state legislature are aware of this intellectual ferment transpiring right under their noses in the Lone Star State.
Nor is Deep Vellum the only well-regarded indie publisher based in a deep-red state. Sarabande Books, founded in 1994, is another not-for-profit literary press in an unlikely location: Louisville, Kentucky. (The house also maintains an office in New York.) Sarabande publishes a wide range of prize-winning writers, and its books are reviewed so frequently that for the longest time I assumed Sarabande was an imprint of one of the Big Five. I recently read and can recommend Paul Griner’s The Book of Otto and Liam, from 2021. George Saunders said of this novel, “It has something important to teach us about our dangerous national addictions to violence, hostile projection, and political polarization and does so in that classic literary way: by making us care deeply about individual human beings.”
Red Hen Press, based in Pasadena, was also founded in 1994. Although it too is a non-profit, Red Hen has a number of smaller imprints. Red Hen Press itself specializes in literary fiction, poetry and nonfiction. The Good Deed, by British-American writer Helen Benedict, focuses on the refugee crisis, particularly the plight of women refugees, and was published just last year. It is excellent. Kirkus Reviews sums up its review of the novel this way: “An insightful reminder of our responsibilities to one another, more important now than ever.”
Next up, a handful of lesser-known (but still quite interesting) smaller presses. Let’s take them in alphabetical order, beginning with 7.13 Books.
7.13 Books was named thus by its founder, Leland Cheuk, because he had manuscripts accepted on July 13th on two separate occasions. If you can find a copy of Cheuk’s short story collection, Letters from Dinosaurs (Thought Catalog, 2016), it is well worth seeking out. 7.13 Books focuses on literary fiction. The house began in Brooklyn and is now also based in Pasadena. You may well enjoy the Jackson Bliss novel, Amnesia of June Bugs, which focuses on four characters whose paths cross in New York during Hurricane Sandy. I certainly did, and T.C. Boyle notes that “Jackson Bliss is as verbally exuberant as any writer I’ve come across in years.”
Clash Books, based in Troy, NY, began as a website and evolved into a book publisher in 2017. The house publishes around 20 titles a year, including art books, poetry, fiction and nonfiction. They also have a penchant for horror. Their list is nothing if not eclectic: they publish big, weighty tomes like Mark de Silva’s The Logos (I haven’t yet read it) and smaller titles such as Little Lazarus by Michael Bible, “a little novel of profound wonder” (Southwest Review). Despite its seemingly bleak subject matter (two clairvoyant tortoises who bear witness to centuries of human suffering and then our ultimate extinction), Little Lazarus manages a gentle tone and is quite thought-provoking.
Slant Books, of Seattle, was founded in 2013. It is “an independent, not-for-profit literary press specializing in fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, theology, and belles lettres.” A.G. Mojtabai’s brief 2024 novel Featherless is a representative title and an excellent read. Since Plato defined a human being as a “featherless biped,” Mojtabai uses the designation as her title for this book set in the confines of the Shady Rest Home for the Aged. The Boston Globe said that “Mojtabai has all the gifts of a great writer—the observant eye that misses no nuance of expression; the ear that hears the music and the poetry behind the plain cadences of common speech; the willingness to confront her own primal fears.”
Finally, we come to Unsolicited Press, based in Portland, Oregon and founded in 2012. As you can see, the house’s motto is “no bullshit, just books.” Presumably the “bullshit” refers to the formulaic nature of the majority of titles published by the Big Five. Proudly progressive, Unsolicited describes itself as “rebellious, relentless and philanthropic,” and promotes some of its titles under the rubric “2025 Year of Womxn.” Yet its titles are also remarkably diverse. I’ve read two Unsolicited Press novels recently, Mick Bennett’s Take the Lively Air (2023) and Trevor J. Houser’s The Prumont Method (also 2023). The first is set on the Jersey Shore and concerns a minor traffic collision which escalates into a confrontation between two families, each with its own troubles. The second features “math hobbyist” Roger Prumont, who has created a formula to predict when and where the next mass shooting will occur. Both are enjoyable reads.
Thus concludes our mini survey of America’s small presses. There are many more out there, and quite a few of those are also excellent. There are also some outstanding small presses based overseas. So, next time you’re looking for something to read, try ignoring the Big Five’s hype on social media and seek out something different, and something rewarding, from a small independent press.
