Small press: History and Key Facts

A small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain level or below a certain number of titles published. The terms "indie publisher" and "independent press" and others are sometimes used interchangeably. However, when a distinction is drawn, there are about 100,000 small presses and about one million independent presses.

Independent press is generally defined as publishers that are not part of large conglomerates or multinational corporations. Even when owned by a larger business, an independent press is allowed to choose which books to publish, and the business will survive or fail as a result of how well those books sell. Many small presses rely on specialization in genre fiction, poetry, or limited-edition books or magazines, but there are also thousands that focus on niche non-fiction markets.

Other terms for small press, sometimes distinguished from each other and sometimes used interchangeably, are small publishers, independent publishers, or indie presses.

Independent publishers (as defined above) made up about half of the market share of the book publishing industry in the United States in 2007. The majority of small presses are independent or indie publishers, meaning that they are separate from the handful of major publishing house conglomerates, such as Random House or Hachette.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Small press by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.