Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software, and other content available to the public for sale or free of charge. 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 e-books, digital magazines, websites, social media, music, and video game publishing.
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. However, when a distinction is drawn, there are about 100,000 small presses and about one million independent presses.
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, C. S. Lewis, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, Milan Kundera and Kazuo Ishiguro.
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.
Constable & Robinson Ltd. is an imprint of Little, Brown which publishes fiction and non-fiction books and ebooks.
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."
Independent Publishers Group (IPG) is a worldwide distributor for independent general, academic, and professional publishers, founded in 1971 to exclusively market titles from independent client publishers to the international book trade. As per other book wholesalers and distributors, IPG combines its client publishers’ books into a single list, comparable to the larger publishing houses. IPG’s distribution services to publishers include warehousing, bill collecting, and sales to the book trade. IPG currently represents about 1,000 publishers. They are based in Chicago, Illinois. IPG distributes publishers based in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Ireland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Israel, and others.
Chicago Review Press, or CRP, is a U.S. book publisher and an independent company founded in 1973. Chicago Review Press publishes approximately 60 new titles yearly under eight imprints: Chicago Review Press, Lawrence Hill Books, Academy Chicago, Ball Publishing, Council Oak Books, Zephyr Press, Parenting Press, and Amberjack Publishing. They describe their books as "a little quirky, a little edgy, smart".
Oneworld Publications is a British independent publishing firm founded in 1986 by Novin Doostdar and Juliet Mabey originally to publish accessible non-fiction by experts and academics for the general market. Based in London, it later added a literary fiction list and both a children's list and an upmarket crime list, and now publishes across a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, current affairs, popular science, religion, philosophy, and psychology, as well as literary fiction, crime fiction and suspense, and children's titles.
Giramondo Publishing is an independent Australian literary small press founded in 1995. It is a publisher of poetry, fiction and non-fiction by Australian and overseas writers, and works in translation from Chinese, German, Spanish, French and Hindi. It also published HEAT magazine in two series from 1996 to 2012.
Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using print on demand technology. It may also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, games, video content, artwork, and zines. Web fiction is also a major medium for self-publishing.
Coffee House Press is a nonprofit independent press based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The press’s goal is to "produce books that celebrate imagination, innovation in the craft of writing, and the many authentic voices of the American experience." It is widely considered to be among the top five independent presses in the United States, and has been called a national treasure. The press publishes literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
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.
And Other Stories is an independent British book publisher founded in 2009, notable for being the first UK publisher of literary fiction to make direct, advance subscriptions a major part of its business model as well as for its use of foreign language reading groups to choose the books that it publishes. The company originally operated from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, but is now based in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. In 2012, it was nominated for the Newcomer of the Year award by the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG).
Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927. It has more than 300 publishing imprints. Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House is considered one of the "Big Five" English-language publishers.
Wendy J. Fox is an American author born in Washington. She is most known as a writer of fiction and has thrice been a finalist for the Colorado Book Awards. In 2015, she was nominated for her collection "The Seven Stages of Anger and Other Stories" and in 2020, she was a finalist in literary fiction for "If the Ice Had Held." In 2022, she won for "What If We Were Somewhere Else", a collection of short stories.
Cassava Republic Press is a steering African book publishing company established in Nigeria in 2006 and headed by Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, with a focus on affordability, the need to find and develop local talent, and to publish African writers too often celebrated only in Europe and America. Cassava Republic's stated mission is "to change the way we all think about African writing. (...) to build a new body of African writing that links writers across different times and spaces." The publishing house is considered to be "at the centre of a thriving literary scene" that has seen Nigerian writers in particular, as well as writers from elsewhere on the African continent, having considerable success both at home and internationally. ThisDay newspaper has stated of the publishing house that "it is credited with innovation. From driving down the cost of books to using digital media to drive sales, Cassava has invariably sought to redefine the African narrative."
Andrew Nash Gifford is an American publisher born in Washington, D.C. He is most known for founding Santa Fe Writers Project, an independent press. Gifford is also the author of the memoir We All Scream which details his family story; Gifford is the grandson of John Nash Gifford, the founder of Gifford's Ice Cream & Candy Co.
