SMALL PRESSES
The small press is perhaps the most common form of independent publishing and, generally speaking, it can be defined as simply any publisher running a smaller operation; it is a kind of commercial printing but uses smaller budgets and receives smaller profits because it works on a smaller scale. Bill Henderson reveals that “if small literary presses had not begun to flourish in the 1960s and 1970s and were not continuing to prosper in the current decade, very little imaginative writing would be published in this country. Serious fiction, poetry, the inventive essay-all would find few outlets beyond a few commercial magazines and a handful of book houses.” Although talking of the US, Henderson's point still stands for the UK. Some famous UK publishers which began as smaller presses were founded even earlier than this period (such as in the 20s), including: T.S. Eliot’s Faber and Faber, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press. Therefore, albeit small, this form of press has had a major presence in the literary world for decades.
Nigel Wheale defines the small press as: “one, or rarely more than two individuals who, usually in their spare time and at their own expense, write or edit poetry, print and bind it more or less competently, and circulate it, almost invariably at a loss, or at best only barely covering their costs.” With this in mind, small presses usually print more niche forms of literature like poetry collections or short stories, and as a result their readership is often smaller, advertisement may be tricker and sales are fewer. While this may seem limiting to an extent because the influence is potentially smaller, there are multiple advantages to a small, independent press as opposed to a large commercial one. For instance, by printing less conventional and more experimental forms of literature, the smaller presses open themselves up to greater flexibility as they present new work with aesthetic value as opposed to mainstream, safe, marketable commercial forms.
They are also more flexible because they are not accountable to shareholders or owners demanding instant high returns. Not only this, but for an author using a smaller press, they are likely to have more involvement in their own work such as designing the cover and overseeing the edits, as well as having a proportionally larger share in the profits (it can even be as dramatic as 50% as opposed to only 5% for a writer using a commercial publisher).
In an interview for The Literary Consultancy (TLC), Sam Jordison, co-founder of the independent publisher Galley Beggar Press, said: “Galley Beggar Press are small. We do between two and four books a year. We have a core dedicated audience. We publish for love.” He continues, “Every small independent press is very different. I guess in a way, that’s the difference. That indie presses will have their own unique flavour and eccentricities and interests. Some indies will offer you more intense editorial. Some will be more hands off… I guess you won’t feel so much like you’re lost in a giant machine in an indie. (Which isn’t to say that big machines don’t have their uses!) [...] I guess as an Indie we have the luxury of going for projects we love and things we think are really good. We don’t have to follow fashion and we don’t have to bow to shareholders. But that doesn’t mean we are simply wilfully obscure… I always like to think that we’d have wanted to publish Harry Potter, for instance, so long as we’d spotted it on the slush pile. If it’s got the magic, it’s worth pursuing…”
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We can conclude, then, that being part of an independent press is truly heartening, as it feels more inclusive simply because it is small.
