Publishers Who Accept Unagented Submissions
Most unpublished authors want to go the traditional route: find an agent who will find them a publisher. In order to access any of the larger publishers, this is the route you must take. But there are a few publishers who will look at manuscripts directly, and for an author who is convinced they have a winning manuscript but just haven't been able to entince an agent, going directly to a publishers might make sense.
The table below shows all the publishers that I know of that meet the following criteria:
- Accept queries from unpublished and unagented authors
- Regularly publish full-length fiction
- Have a formal distribution system in place - they don't rely on a bookstore or distributor calling them up to order one book at a time (because if they do, you might be better off self-publishing, which is an entirely different and complex topic)
I am sure I have left off publishers that should be on this list; if so, please tell me so I can add them. If any information is inaccurate or missing, please let me know so I can fix it. It would be particularly helpful if anyone familiar with any of these presses could tell us what kind of works they like to publish. It's sometimes hard to infer their preferences from their recently published work.
Click on the name of the publisher to see the rest of the information I have about them, as well as your own (vsitors') comments. Look at each publishers' website for submission information.
| Publisher |
Location |
Website |
| Algonquin Books |
Chapel Hill, NC |
http://www.algonquin.com |
| Chronicle Books |
San Francisco, CA |
http://www.chroniclebooks.com |
| Coffee House Press |
Minneapolis, MN |
http://www.coffeehousepress.org |
| Eastern Washington University Press |
Spokane, WA |
http://www.ewu.edu/dcesso/press/ |
| Forge Books |
New York, NY |
http://www.tor.com/forge.html |
| Graywolf Press |
Saint Paul, MN |
http://www.graywolfpress.org |
| Insomniac Press |
Toronto, Ca |
http://www.insomniacpress.com |
| MacAdam/Cage Publishing |
San Francisco, CA |
http://www.macadamcage.com |
| McClelland & Stewart, Ltd. |
Toronto, Ca |
http://www.mcclelland.com |
| Mid-List Press |
Minneapolis, MN |
http://www.midlist.org |
| Milkweed Editions |
Minneapolis, MN |
http://www.milkweed.org |
| River City Press |
Montgomery, AL |
http://www.rivercitypublishing.com |
| Soft Skull Press |
Brooklyn, NY |
http://www.softskull.com |
| Soho Press |
New York, NY |
http://www.sohopress.com |
| Southern Methodist Press |
Dallas, TX |
http://www.tamu.edu/upress/SMU/smugen.html |
| Story Line Press |
Ashland, OR |
http://www.storylinepress.com |
| The Permanent Press |
Sag Harbor, NY |
http://www.thepermanentpress.com |
