Alex Higley on Founding an Independent Press, Great Place Books
We started Great Place Books because we felt we had the energy, enthusiasm, and expertise to publish three or so incredible books each year. Our goal is not to get rich or to take over the publishing industry; both of those outcomes are impossibilities we aren’t interested in and we all have other full-time jobs. Our goal is to be a home for authors whose work is slipping through the cracks of the current system.
As writers, my cofounders Emily Adrian, Monika Woods, and I have experienced the submission process firsthand and faced, many times over, the reality that only a few presses are truly interested in fiction without an obvious commercial hook. (This is to say nothing of poetry, for which there is even less interest and even less opportunity.) Publishing feels increasingly hostile to literary fiction, especially as the lines between commercial, genre, upmarket, and literary fiction continue to blur. Great Place Books is committed to publishing challenging, distinctive works, including those that can’t be easily summarized or pitched.
Already, I have felt hypocritical as an acquiring editor. Because we are only publishing three titles a year, we have passed on many worthy projects. Even as we aim to be another home for idiosyncratic and daring work, we have inevitably created another outlet that will reject exactly that. Our enthusiasm for a project is informed not only by the manuscript’s ambitions, but by its less effable qualities, such as its confidence, control, honesty, openness, mystery, belief, fear, sharpness. In turning down submissions, I’ve found myself citing some of the same reasons my own work was rejected in the past. Nothing about publishing is fair.
When we say yes to a project, it’s because we know we are the right editors for the book and the right press to see the book through publication. To the titles on our list, we aim to give everything we can. We are so grateful to the authors who have entrusted Great Place Books with their work, and we look forward to supporting their careers long-term. As trade publishing becomes more dependent on algorithms and high-profile endorsements, more entwined with “content producers” and celebrity culture, we want writers to stay connected to their work. We want readers to know the thrill of reading something unexpected. To that end, let’s pick up a title from Charco Press. Or Coffee House Press. Graywolf. Copper Canyon. Order a book from Chicago’s own Pilsen Community Bookstore, or better yet, stop by in person. Preorder our first title, the debut poetry collection Blocks World by Emma Catherine Perry at greatplacebooks.com.
Alex Higley is the author of Cardinal (nominated for the PEN/Bingham) and Old Open. His novel True Failure will be published by Coffee House Press in 2024. He is an editor at Great Place Books.