My New Year’s resolution is to read more books from small presses

Which means I need all your recommendations

Let me just start by admitting that I have not been the supporter of small presses that I would like to have been over the course of my writing life. Every now and then I stumble on a book I love that happens to have been published by a small press (see Boys Come First from Belt Publishing and Ancient Oceans of Central Kentucky from Two Dollar Radio or Bride of the Tornado from Quirk Books or Ben H. Winters’ Last Policeman Series, also from Quirk Books), but I don’t make an effort to seek them out.

Why don’t I read more books from small presses? What is that about?

Part of it, of course, is simply that books from small presses have a harder time rising out of the white noise of new book releases and the lists of books to read and the books that make it into bookstores, let alone get faced out or put on the table to draw your attention. Books from small presses, in other words, are less likely to make it onto my book radar. I have to make a special effort to find them and I don’t often do that.

Also, and this is my guilty confession, I have a weird sort of preconception about books from small presses. Or maybe a chip on my shoulder about small presses. The thing is, I don’t have an MFA. I don’t live in New York or LA or Portland or any place with anything that even resembles a literary scene. I grew up in one small town in Kentucky and I have now lived most of my life in another small town in Indiana. In between, I hung out in “backwaters” like Mississippi and Alabama.

This is all to say that I have never felt like an insider to any kind of literary world. I have always felt like the dorky kid, peeking through the window at what all the cool kids are doing inside at the cool kids table (I suspect I will always feel this way and I’m mostly okay with it). In some ways, then, I guess I’ve felt that I’m not cool enough to read books from small presses. I’ve felt like I don’t belong in that world.

Closely related to this feeling of inadequacy is a misguided belief that small press books are too artsy or experimental or weird for me. It’s a good example of confirmation bias and how difficult it is to let go of certain beliefs. I’ve liked almost every book from a small press that I’ve read. And yet, I still believe that somehow they’re too far outside my reading comfort zone.

Then at the end of this year my linked short story collection, SEX OF THE MIDWEST, was selected by the lovely women at

Galiot Press Substack

to be one of their debut books in Fall 2025. And I read this post by

Notes from Elizabeth Kaye Cook

and

Melanie Jennings

at

Persuasion

about how the big five publishers have killed literary fiction, but it will survive in the world of small presses.

“It’s time to put aside your hang-ups and start reading more books from small presses,” I said to myself.

Photo by Robert Anasch on Unsplash

Is this partially self-interested given that my book will be coming out from a small press? Yes. But better late than never, right?

So here I am, committing to reading and reviewing at least one book per month from a small press in 2025. I’ll post the reviews here on my newsletter.

I’m certain it won’t be hard to find great books from small presses, but I’m also happy to take all the recommendations. So tell me about your favorite book from a small press. My preferences aren’t set in stone, but I prefer fiction—short story collections or novels. But really, if it’s great, I’ll read anything. It’d be nice to have some new books, too, ones that are coming out in 2025.

What is a small press, you might ask? Good question. I’m not really interested in getting into big debates about what is and isn’t small. For my purposes, I’m not counting self-published books, even though they’re kind of the ultimate small press. I want to support those selfless people who are doing all the work to get other people’s books out into the world.

For me, academic presses do count as small. The amazing short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, by

Deesha Philyaw

was published by West Virginia University Press and bless them for that, because that book is just one of the most excellent, original things I’ve read in years and the book that partly inspired my own collection.

So let’s celebrate all the great books from small presses! Give me all your recommendations! I’ll try to share all of them, even the ones I don’t read and review.

Also, I have no doubt there are other people out here on the internet highlighting small presses. Tell me all about them, too!