Selling to Smaller Presses

ButtonTheCat said:

I've been perusing ideas for nonfiction books and I'm wondering if smaller publishers may be the way to go in the beginning?

I believe someone mentioned this earlier and I'd like to consider my options. I've submitted a few queries to agents about my ideas. I guess I'm anxious to hear back and overthinking?

Anyways, I'd like to ask about the small presses and what they are like. Should it be that I work my way from top to bottom and see who takes the proposal? Or shoud I start with a couple bottoms and work my way up later?
Any opinions?

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Hi Button,
I work for a small press, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both large and small publishers. Of course you should start big and see where it gets you: big publishers give much larger advances, for one reason, and have terrific pull in bookstores. But the downside to working with a big publisher is that they don't always spend money on midlist or bottom-of-list books, and if yours is one of those, you don't get a lot of support or publicity for your book. The downside to working with a small publisher is that we often give small advances (some give no advances) and large chains won't necessarily buy everything on our list just "because" we're like Random House or McGraw-Hill. On the other hand, we can't afford to have a book tank, so we are very choosy about what we'll take on and put a huge amount of effort into promotion--we hope with good results. Research each publisher very carefully, find out what they do well and what they don't; a lot of small publishers don't have national distribution, for example, or don't have the ability to promote just any book (if they have done a book on healthcare one season, they won't know anything about children's activity books, for example). Good luck! Keep us posted.