No Agent? No problem.
Submit your manuscript to these presses without an agent.
In the world of publishing, there is no correct path to publication. Some writers begin by submitting their work to literary journals, posting here on Substack, writing articles for Medium, or micro-blogging on their Instagrams. Basically, there is a buffet of publishing options at a writer’s fingertips.
For the more verbose writers, who wish to toil over their keyboard for the foreseeable future with unknown financial payoff, they write a book. In the world of book publishing specifically, there are two clear winners for publishing; traditional or self-publishing. However, it isn’t such a binary issue. There is more space in the middle, a gray area, between these two options.
In traditional publishing, writers must find an agent to receive the golden ticket, which provides them with access to the largest publishers in the industry. Many writers would agree finding an agent is a bit like finding a unicorn. It is a vague and challenging journey with a magical payoff.
There are various reasons why a person would not want to take their chances trying to find an agent. For anyone who has suffered through the trenches, it is a demoralizing process full of rejection and can shut a writer down before they have even gotten started. This has happened to me. After querying my first book, I didn’t write anything for nearly eight months.
Beyond the demoralizing process of trying to find an agent before ever going on submission, there are many other reasons someone may not want to work with an agent. In the past, there are cases of literary agents acting badly. I wrote about this last week. Or perhaps, a writer wants to avoid the querying process altogether. All of these are valid.
If you are interested in submitting your work to publishers but don’t have an agent, for whatever reason, there are alternative options available. In my case, I have opted to submit my manuscript to a handful of small presses who don’t require an agent while querying my second book.
Small presses may not provide the big book advance. They may not even distribute physical books. Some small presses only focus on eBooks. These are things to consider when determining your publishing path.
Below, you will find a non-exhaustive list of small presses who accept novel-length works of fiction without an agent. I encourage you to do more research to find the presses that are a good fit for you and hopefully this provides a springboard for your journey into submitting directly to publishers.
Publishers Who Accept Unagented Submissions
Focuses on publishing science fiction and fantasy, including comics.
This publisher has a wide-ranging catalog of both fiction and narrative nonfiction.
Focuses on publishing books whose main characters identify as queer, lesbian or non-binary. They accept most fiction genres.
This publisher focuses on publishing full-length novels of genre fiction of horror, thriller, and fantasy.
Carina Press is an imprint of Harlequin. They focus on publishing paranormal, science fiction and fantasy.
This publisher owns a previously mentioned press, Alcove Press. Crooked Lane primarily publishes crime fiction, historical romance and mysteries.
Flux is an imprint of North Star Editions and publishes young adult fiction of all genres.
Focuses on publishing full-length novels of crime and detective fiction.
Entangled has many imprints and only publishes romance and all its sub-genres.
An imprint of Hachette, this publisher only publishes science fiction and fantasy that is at least 70K in length.