I thought it would be beneficial to have a place to discuss small presses, which ones look promising, and share information. It is, after all, easier to be picked up by a small press than a publishing house like Thomas Nelson, for example.

Here are the pros and cons I've found while researching small presses.

Pros: You’ll be working with editors and cover designers. All the formatting and technical stuff will be done for you.

You might get some help marketing (but that’s not a guarantee).

You’ll automatically get better distribution, maybe even a listing on Christianbook.com, depending on the company (which is not always an easy thing to get).

Cons: If a small press was the way I wanted to go, I really only have one con, but it’s a pretty big one. The problem with small presses is that they set the list prices of the books way too high. I’m not sure why that is, but with every promising company I’ve looked at so far, a 300 page book, for instance, is typically around $17.99-$19.99. That just doesn’t work. I would never buy a paperback for more than $14, especially by someone I’d never heard of, and most traditionally published paperbacks aren’t over $13 or $14. You would have to work really, really hard to sell at that price. And if the list price is that expensive, the author copies probably aren’t cheap either.

This is sort of a con, but it depends on the company. With some, the covers aren’t all that professional looking, especially when you compare them to books from places like Thomas Nelson. You’d definitely want to go through their books and see how they look.

Here is a link to one of the small presses that has always looked the most promising to me. http://www.oaktara.com/ Some of their books seem to be doing very well. I've never been in contact with them, but someone I know published with them, and he's happy as far as I know. Their books are listed on a long list of book selling sites, including Christianbook.com, but as I mentioned, their books are priced really high.

Good points Makilien. Do you know where we can find a good place to define the differences between the different types of publishing avenues (i.e., small press, vanity press, etc)? I found a helpful blog post (here).

Mike Duran has an awesome series on his blog right now where he's interviewing small press publishers.

Check out his: Interview with Port Yonder Press Managing Editor Chila Woychik

Would Marcher Lord Press or Splashdown Books be considered small press, because their books are very reasonable. You can get almost all of them for under $10 on kindle. I wonder if kindle is lowering the prices of small press, even though I still see some over $25 (paperbacks, not kindle versions). With this point, small presses wouldn't be as bogged down by your major concern of higher prices. If this becomes more widespread, do small presses become more viable?

If I had a manuscript ready right now, I'd go to Splashdown Books before self-publishing. (edit: 10 min later. I don't actually see any books on SB that I want to buy, so maybe I should go somewhere else. Plus, I may not be so open in my audience to only Christians, and theirs seem pretty obvious. I guess I'll keep looking.)

Here is a site I've looked at quite often that describes each of the different types of publishing: http://www.sfwa.org/for-authors/writer-beware/vanity/

Yes, I would say Marcher Lord Press (which looks awesome, by the way) and Splashdown Books would be small press. I've actually never compared Kindle prices of small presses before. I was mainly looking at the paperback prices. MLP is still a little high, but not the worst. Kindle book prices will definitely have to come down at some point I would think, or both large and small presses will never be able to compete with all the .99 cent-$2.99 books out there.

Speaking of different small presses, here's another link I think anyone considering a small press should take a look at. It's a thumbs down list and things to watch out for from Writer Beware: http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2007/02/h ... eware.html