How to Start a Small Press

Since starting Haywire Books in 2019, I occasionally receive emails looking for advice about how to start a small press. Everyone has different motivations for starting a press and brings a different set of skills and understanding of the industry, but I’ve put together a few general principles below that may point you in the right for getting a press off the ground.

Haywire Books Archive: 2020 Recommendations from Haywire Books Authors

What a doozy of a year this turned out to be! History may remember 2020 as a year of alienation—social distancing and political polarization—but Haywire Books was founded with the idea that books can help us better understand the world and connect us to each other. Below are some of the Haywire Books authors’ favorite reading of the year, the books that helped us make sense of a chaotic world.

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Haywire Books Archive: So You Want to Be a Novelist

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Jon Sealy has a short essay at The Millions about his journey as an author. Check it out!

I had five years of mostly failures: two books with two agents didn’t sell, and meanwhile a new crop of dazzling debut novelists took the literary stage. Now, my second novel is about to launch on a press I founded, and I’m dreading the inevitable question of what to do to get from young scribbler with an idea to a capital-w Writer on Book Tour.

Maybe, don’t do it.

I’m 36 years old now and have been writing seriously for half my life. In that time, the publishing world is a different game from the one I started playing in college. None of the old rules apply, and I suspect any advice I might offer a student will be irrelevant by the time they find their own way.

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Haywire Books Archive: Book Launch: Jon Sealy's The Edge of America

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The Edge of America is now in the world! This exciting literary thriller is set in Miami 1984, and it tells the story of Bobby West, a businessman with CIA ties who gets involved in an ill-advised money-laundering operation. Things go south when his teenage daughter makes off with $3 million out of a safe in his house.

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Haywire Books Archive: The Dismal State of Publishing

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Last month, I kicked off this series with a post about what Haywire Books is here to do—offer a select group of writers a home while they build their audience. I beat up on the model for big publishing without offering a perspective on the pressures the big five out of New York are facing. Beyond the pressures all large organizations face—legacy systems, stakeholder obligations, demanding shareholders—publishers of all sizes are facing some enormous uphill battles.