Are mid-sized presses indie/small presses?

Laer Carroll said:

I keep reading comments from people in AW who talk about "indie" and "small" presses as opposed to the "big" presses.

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An independent press is a press which isn't an imprint of a larger press.

Some independent presses are small; some are middling-sized; some are big. But they're not as big as the Big Five. Compared to the Big Five most independent presses are small. If you want to see how small they are, check out their annual turnovers and the numbers of books they publish.

But in 2013 16 of the 200 or so scifi/fantasy imprints each published several dozen titles. This includes St. Martin's (79), Baen (75), Harlequin (75), Scholastic (56), and DAW (50).

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I don't understand what you're asking here. Could you clarify, please?

Are the mid-sized presses really "small"? Or "indie"?

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Some of them are, some of them aren't. If they're imprints of larger publishing houses then no, they're not independent. If they're not then yep, they are independent presses. It all depends on who owns them.

OP, the main distinction (and what Old Hack said) is that there are two general groupings: the big five publishers -- and this includes their imprints (e.g. St Martin's is an imprint of Macmillan, a big five publisher) and everyone else. Those not among the big five and their imprints are considered "independent."

But then it gets tricky, the lines blurring. As Old Hack says, the independents vary in their size, plus they can go from independent to part of the big five in the blink of an eye (e..g, Harlequin, a large independent owned by Torstar, was sold recently to HarperCollins).

"Indie" is a term I now largely disregard. Old Hack uses it to denote "independent", but some people throw that term around differently, including presses that allow to people to self-publish. They basically equate "indie" with "alternative", which is not uncommon in the music industry but a bit of misnomer in publishing. I've seen on certain blogs where writers mention that they've been "indie" published and when I look at their books on Amazon, it's clear it's self-published. Some only available as e-books.

So, the first question is whether the press is independent of the big five or not. Then, as Old Hack says, how many titles do they put out annually give me a rough idea of whether they're mid-sized, small or micro.

Phyllo said:

"Indie" is a term I now largely disregard. Old Hack uses it to denote "independent",

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I don't use the term "indie" to denote "independent". I use the term "independent" to denote "independent". Please don't put words into my mouth like that.

I use the term "independent" in the way it's been used in trade publishing for the last few decades: to denote a publishing house which is independent of the larger houses. The term "indie" is now in common usage among some self-publishers, as if the term "self publishing" is somehow insulting and they're ashamed to use it. All that's happened is that confusion has arisen. And that IS a shame.

but some people throw that term around differently, including presses that allow to people to self-publish.

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If you're published by a press, you're not self published. If someone else does something for you, you've not done it yourself.