Literary presses are publishing companies that publish books with a literary or artistic emphasis. This is a list of publishing companies and imprints whose primary emphasis is on literature and the arts. It does not include exclusively online publishers, academic publishers (who often publish very limited print runs, but for a different market), or businesses operating solely as printers, such as print-on-demand companies or vanity presses.
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software, and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, comic books, newspapers, and magazines. With the advent of digital information systems, the scope has expanded to include digital publishing such as ebooks, digital magazines, websites, social media, music, and video game publishing.
Print on demand (POD) is a printing technology and business process in which book copies are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints in single or small quantities. While other industries established the build-to-order business model, POD could only develop after the beginning of digital printing because it was not economical to print single copies using traditional printing technologies such as letterpress and offset printing.
A vanity press or vanity publisher, sometimes also subsidy publisher, is a publishing house where the author pays to have the book published, and signs a restrictive contract which involves surrendering significant rights. It is not to be confused with hybrid publishing, where the publisher and author collaborate and share costs and risks, or with assisted self-publishing, where the author pays publishing services to assist with self-publishing his own book, and retains all rights.
Although Irish has been used as a literary language for more than 1,500 years, and modern literature in Irish dates – as in most European languages – to the 16th century, modern Irish literature owes much of its popularity to the 19th century Gaelic Revival, a cultural and language revival movement, and to the efforts of more recent poets and writers. In an act of literary decolonization common to many other peoples seeking self-determination, writers in Irish have taken the advice of Patrick Pearse and have combined influences from both their own literary history and the whole of world literature. Writers in Modern Irish have accordingly produced some of the most interesting literature to come out of Ireland, while being both supplemented and influenced by poetry and prose composed in the Irish language outside Ireland.
A small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain level or below a certain number of titles published. The terms "indie publisher" and "independent press" and others are sometimes used interchangeably.
Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Milan Kundera and Kazuo Ishiguro.
McClelland & Stewart Limited is a Canadian publishing company. It is owned by Penguin Random House of Canada, a branch of Penguin Random House, the international book publishing division of German media giant Bertelsmann.
Coach House Books is an independent book publishing company located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Coach House publishes experimental poetry, fiction, drama and non-fiction. The press is particularly interested in writing that pushes at the boundaries of convention.
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry, and essays, along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters. Literary magazines are often called literary journals, or little magazines, terms intended to contrast them with larger, commercial magazines.
Tuttle Publishing, originally the Charles E. Tuttle Company, is a book publishing company that includes Tuttle, Periplus Editions, and Journey Editions. A company profile describes it as an "International publisher of innovative books on design, cooking, martial arts, language, travel and spirituality with a focus on China, Japan and Southeast Asia." Many of its books on Asian martial arts, particularly those on Japanese martial arts, were the first widely read publications on these subjects in the English language.
Peepal Tree Press is a publisher based in Leeds, England which publishes Caribbean, Black British, and South Asian fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama and academic books. Poet Kwame Dawes has said, "Peepal Tree Press’s position as the leading publisher of Caribbean literature, and especially of Caribbean poetry, is unassailable."
Grove Atlantic, Inc. is an American independent publisher, based in New York City. Formerly styled "Grove/Atlantic, Inc.", it was created in 1993 by the merger of Grove Press and Atlantic Monthly Press. As of 2018 Grove Atlantic calls itself "An Independent Literary Publisher Since 1917". That refers to the official date Atlantic Monthly Press was established by the Boston magazine The Atlantic Monthly.
Seren Books is the trading name of Poetry Wales Press, an independent publisher based in Bridgend, Wales, specialising in English-language writing from Wales and also publishing other literary fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Seren's aim is to bring Welsh literature and culture to a wider audience. The press takes its name from the Welsh word for "star".
Graywolf Press is an independent, non-profit publisher located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf Press publishes fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
David Samuel Nutt was an English book publisher and seller. Operating from various locations in London, Nutt specialized in the sale of imported foreign books, catering to prestigious institutions like the British Museum and private collectors. His firm ventured into publishing in the 1830s, with a focus on foreign market publications, religious and educational texts, antiquarian literature, and scholarly works. In 1851, Nutt formed a partnership with Nicholas Trübner, a German-English publisher.
Atlantic Books is an independent British publishing house, with its headquarters in Ormond House in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is perhaps best known for publishing Aravind Adiga's debut novel The White Tiger, which received the 40th Man Booker Prize in 2008, and for its long-standing relationship with the late Christopher Hitchens.
Amazon Publishing is Amazon's book publishing unit launched in 2009. It is composed of 15 imprints including AmazonEncore, AmazonCrossing, Montlake Romance, Thomas & Mercer, 47North, and Topple Books.
Raduga Publishers was a Soviet publishing house of innovative children's books, which has been described as "one of the most important book publishers of its type" during the early twentieth century.