#38: the heartbreak of small-press publishing

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This episode of Editing Writing is an interview I did with my good friend Oscar Martens, who has published two collections of short literary collection with small presses. One is called The Girl with the Full Figure Is Your Daughter, and the most recent one is No Call Too Small. Both were very well reviewed—but there’s a but.

It’s that even though being published by a small press involves the same waiting for acceptance and publishing in literary journals that publishing with one of the big famous publishers does, often there is not the publicity machine to help sell copies. It can be discouraging for any author who has written high-quality work, but then doesn’t see a “return,” so to speak, on it.