College & University Presses: Nonfiction only club?

As far as I know, most of them do: Cambridge, Oxford, Ohio and Northwestern appeared on the first page of a Google search for "university Press" "fiction". but I am curious why you specifically want a university press when you don't have a specific one in mind. They do tend to lean towards publishing their own students/faculty and specialist interest areas within literature.

Lots of university presses publish fiction--and poetry, but mostly they publish either academic editions of well-established writers, or the works of faculty and students associated with the university, as Veinglory said.

Keep in mind, however, that print runs, distribution, and royalties (if they even pay royalties) are usually small.

Two of my Dad's novels were published by a university press before they decided to stick to non-fiction only (with a small divergence every year for a short fiction contest). In my opinion, print runs, royalties, and distribution were excellent on the first book, but by the second book there was a new head of the press and things kind of went downhill (and, of course, he's the one who decided to go to non-fiction only).

From what I've seen, there aren't many university presses dipping into fiction except for occasional contests. But I'm also curious as to why you're looking specifically for a university press. Puma

dear_swan said:

Are there any university presses that publish fiction? All i can seem to find are those that publish nonfic.

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The University of Chicago Press publishes fiction, old and new. Their catalog has an eclectic mix -- new editions of Irwin Shaw's short stories and novels, reprints of classic crime fiction by Richard Stark (a pseudonym used by legendary mystery writer Donald E. Westlake), and new stuff. Here's a link:


http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Subjects/virtual_fiction.html

I'm not sure about novels but several universities publish short story collections, including University of Missouri Press and Iowa University. Missouri is one of the few that pay an advance. Iowa runs an annual contest, the prize being publication and a $1,000 award.