Finding a Poetry Publisher: Look Close to Home—and Far Away
This article is for: Intermediate and Advanced Poets
Is the right press for your book ten miles away? Or three thousand?
If you have a poetry manuscript—or you'll have one soon, or you think you might want one someday—there's a factor in the hunt for a publisher that's easy to overlook entirely: geography.
I want to suggest thinking about it in two apparently opposite directions: looking very close to home, and looking a long way from it.
These sound contradictory, but they actually come from the same idea: reduce competition by finding a publisher whose criteria you fit. Some presses only publish local poets. Foreign presses may have defined styles they like—so the right one may want your book when presses at home don't.
Either way, if you make an astute choice, you can shrink the pool of poets your book has to fight off before it gets accepted.
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Looking local
First, make sure you search for presses that specialize in publishing poets from your region.
It's easy to overlook these. They're usually very small, and it's easy to assume that local means not prestigious. And it's true that if you're aiming for the top echelons of the poetry world, you should target the big national presses.
But for the rest of us—for whom getting a book out at all is a major achievement, given the competition—local presses are well worth your attention. Here's why.
The odds are better
The "local" criterion filters out most of the poets in your country. That means a real chance of publication, and often a faster one.
And the main thing about a poetry book is getting it published by someone. Nothing is more disheartening than a manuscript sitting unread on your hard drive because no one will take it.
My student and Poetry Parlor member Mary Salisbury is a good example. Her chapbook Call The Stars by Name was published by Moon Path Press, which focuses on the US Pacific Northwest. Her full-length manuscript was also recently shortlisted for a national prize—wonderful, and proof the book is excellent—but that shortlisting didn't get a book into print. The local route did.
The books look just as good
Book quality is not usually an issue. Changes in printing technology mean that small presses can now produce books every bit as impressive as the ones made by big presses.
If one of them publishes your book, you won't see any difference from Penguin or Knopf.
Proximity pays
Almost all poetry sales come from the poet promoting their own book, usually at readings.
No press—including the big ones—does much poetry marketing. So you lose very little by going local, and you may well gain.
A nearby press can organize readings that include you, take your book to local festivals, and introduce you to the other poets on its list.
My own local publisher, Bauhan Press in Peterborough, New Hampshire, does exactly this. Sarah Bauhan is best known for the May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize, which publishes one book of national standing each year. But more quietly, she also supports very good southern New Hampshire poets like Rebecca Kaiser Gibson and Kimberley Cloutier Green—and she does an excellent job of getting their books in front of people at local readings and festivals. That's a kind of help a distant press simply can't give you.
Proximity can even find you the publisher, rather than the other way around. Fred Gerhard, who used to come to an open mic I ran, had his book Drifting to Hello published after a local publisher heard him read several times, liked what he heard, and approached him about a book.
There are regional prizes and arts council opportunities that local publication can make you eligible for, too.
A wider definition of "local"
Look out also for presses that publish writers with a connection to a region, not only its current residents.
My friend Bill Varner has lived in Maine for many years, but his chapbook Leaving Erebus was published by Seven Kitchens Press, whose Keystone Chapbook Series is for writers with a Pennsylvania connection. A childhood in Pennsylvania was connection enough.
So think about everywhere you have roots: where you grew up, where you studied, where your family came from. Each one may give you an opening with a press.
There are also region-restricted contests, like the Maine Chapbook Series run by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, which publishes one chapbook a year by a writer based in Maine.
How to find local presses
Local presses don't advertise, so you have to go looking. Try these:
Check who published the poets who read at your local venues.
Look at the copyright pages of books by poets from your area.
Ask your state poetry society or writers' association.
Read regional literary magazines—they may share an ecosystem with regional presses.
Filter the Poets & Writers database by location.
Now the opposite direction: abroad
If local presses are so good, why would I suggest sending your manuscript to a press that isn't even in your country? Same reason, really:
What matters most is that the book gets published—and sometimes a press in another country wants your book when the ones at home don't.
Audrey Bohanan, a poet who lived near me back when I was in Maine, had her book Any Keep or Contour published by Waywiser Press in the UK. When I asked her why, she said she has a very distinctive style and no American press had wanted the manuscript—but Waywiser's editor connected with her aesthetic.
Poetry cultures differ between countries, and the press that's right for your work may simply not be in yours. Cindy Ellen Hill, President of the Poetry Society of Vermont, published her novel-in-sonnets Leeds Point with Selkie Songs, a UK press whose stated interest is in "lyrical, emotionally resonant writing that crosses the borderlands between myth and reality." Her book blends history with imagination. That's not a compromise; that's a match.
Sometimes circumstances push you. Julian Stannard, a fellow lecturer when I taught at Winchester University, lost his publisher when Peterloo Poets folded after two books—so his next, The Parrots of Villa Gruber Discover Lapis Lazuli, went to Salmon Poetry in Ireland.
And if you've moved countries, your original home may still be your natural home in print. Zoe Brigley, whom I knew at Warwick, has lived in Ohio for years but is still published by Bloodaxe in the UK.
You needn't choose one strategy forever, either. Henry Walters, a fellow poet from the Monadnock region, published his first book Field Guide A Tempo with Hobblebush, a New Hampshire press—and his second with Waywiser in the UK. Local, then international, depending on what each book needed.
With electronic submission, all of this is easier than it's ever been.
Things to be aware of with the international route
Eligibility. Some presses won't accept submissions from abroad at all. Always check the guidelines first.
Author copies. Getting books across a border to sell at your own readings can be slow and expensive—if the press will even ship them for you at all. Again, check before you submit.
Launch events. If you want the press to host your launch, you may have to travel. Julian Stannard went to Dublin (and had a wonderful time); Cindy Ellen Hill went to London. Audrey Bohanan arranged her own launch in Maine instead, without the press’s help, which probably made it smaller.
Prizes and reviews. Many national book prizes require publication by a domestic press, and review outlets tend to favor books from their own country. Check this before you commit, since reviews are a large part of how a book gets noticed.
How to find international presses
It's much the same as finding local presses, in reverse: read journals from other countries, notice which presses publish poets whose work resembles yours, and look at who's publishing the foreign poets you admire.
The bottom line
Prestige is not the only axis, and the biggest presses are not the only target. Ask instead: whose criteria do I actually fit?
Sometimes the answer is ten miles away. Sometimes it's three thousand.
Next Steps
Spend twenty minutes building a list of three presses you hadn't previously considered:
One local to you. Search your region plus "poetry press"—New England poetry presses, Pacific Northwest poetry publishers—or use the methods above.
One connected to your past. Where you grew up, where you studied, the state you were born in. Search the same way.
One abroad whose aesthetic matches your work. Think about what your poems actually are—mythic, formal, experimental, plain-spoken—then look for presses in the UK, Ireland, Canada, or Australia that name that quality in their own guidelines.
You don't have to submit to any of them today. Just know they exist.
