Small presses have a long history in Philly. In fact, publishing is one of the city’s oldest industries. Just three years after its founding, the city already had its first printing press. And by the end of the 18th century, Philadelphia had become the center for book printing and publishing in the entire country, surpassing New York and Boston.
Today, centuries later, small and independent presses continue to play a vital role in the city’s literary and intellectual landscape.
Much like publishers back then who helped shape political discourse when ideas like freedom of speech were central in conceiving independence from Britain, today’s publishing houses are increasingly committed to a socially engaged, thought-provoking mission.
To them, the mission does not compromise the quality of content, but rather redefines it, prioritizing voices that have long been unheard and ensuring that publishing remains a space for meaningful encounters and dialogue.
Billy Penn spoke with five small, independent publishers to learn how they are reshaping this legacy, each with their own approach but a shared commitment to promoting diversity, creativity and sustainability.
We will be sharing our conversations with them as a series, over the next few weeks. We’ve already spoken to Josh O’Neill of Beehive Books and Linda Gallant of The Head and The Hand.
Press ahead!
Can you tell us the history of New Door Books?
New Door Books is an imprint of the company that my wife and I own, PM Gordon Associates. The imprint New Door Books is run by us along with an editorial board consisting of members of the Working Writers Group that’s been in existence since 1986.
We started publishing New Door Books in 2009. We started in part to allow some of the members of our group to get their books in print because it’s very difficult for independent authors to find publishers. But after a while, we started to open the press to people outside the group and from other parts of the country …
We publish fiction and creative nonfiction. That’s mostly novels, short stories and memoirs. Always books. We’re not a journal or magazine.
Would you define yourself as a small press or independent press?
All those terms are correct. Small press is correct, independent publisher is correct. Sometimes I use the term micro press.
Is there a particular topic or area of focus that is especially interesting for New Door Books?
We don’t have any one topic, but we have sort of fallen into what we’re now calling a series of books called WalkAbout Books. Capital W, capital A, a pun that indicates these are books about walking.
In 2022, we published a collection of essays called “Ways of Walking” that had 26 different contributors. They were all writing about different experiences they had had while walking, and it ran the gamut from people taking strolls with their fathers and writing about what it was like to walk with a father, to someone who walks everywhere he goes including cross-country. He doesn’t take any other form of transportation. To someone who took a long walk to escape from Syria into Jordan … And [the book] turned out to have an international audience in ways that we didn’t expect.
We discovered there are people now known as “walking artists” around the world and they consider walking as part of their art … So we thought it’d be interesting to do other books about walking, or in which walking plays a major theme. And then an author we knew, whose previous book of stories we had already published, came to us with a novel that involves walking. Her name is Janice Deal. Her new book is called “The Blue Door,” and it’s a novel coming out in April 22nd this year, and in it the protagonist takes a long walk in which she tries to figure out what’s going on in her life. It’s in one way a very quiet book and in another way, a very profound book.
Are you open to receiving manuscript submissions? What do you typically look for in a book?
We have a Submittable. And we open it about once a month for somewhere between 20 and 40 submissions, and then we take a while to go through those and then we open it again.
We think we have high standards. Of course, they are our standards. Maybe other people wouldn’t agree. But we’re looking for books that really ought to be published. And if they come to us, they probably are not ones that would appeal to a commercial publisher.
How do you mean they might not appeal to a commercial publisher?
There are a lot of small [publishers] that basically have that attitude. We’re looking for books that really appeal, that really say something to the reader.
“The Blue Door” is something that would have struggled to find a commercial publisher because the plot essentially is that there’s a middle-aged woman living in the Southwest. Her dog goes missing one morning and she sets out on a walk to find the dog, and she walks all day and finally finds the dog. Now, that on its surface is not really a story, is it? But [when] you look at the background, this woman’s daughter, when she was about 14 years old, murders one of her teachers. Now that the daughter, she’s out of jail and she sent a postcard saying she’s coming to visit her mother. And her mother has to deal with many, many questions about this … So it becomes a philosophical journey. It’s more than what the plot would indicate.
How do you make your business sustainable?
The overarching business, PM Gordon Associates, my wife and I started many years ago to produce books for publishers. We were a book production service. My wife is retired now, but I still do some book production on my own. And basically, that’s how I have been supporting the publication of these books. These literary books that don’t make much money if at all. But recently also, about a year ago, on the advice of some members of our editorial board, we signed on with CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia. We set up what’s called a Model C fiscal sponsorship agreement, in which, although our business PM Gordon Associates is a for-profit business, we can have projects under the umbrella of CultureWorks that are non-profit and we can raise money for those.
What motivates you to publish?
It’s rewarding in an emotional sense. I was an English major long ago, and I’ve always loved books and reading. And once I got into publishing, I was the sort of person who wanted to learn all the different aspects of publishing … When we started publishing our own books, I quickly realized that the one thing I didn’t know was how to publicize or market books. So, I’ve been working on that really hard since then.
Do you think being based in Philly presents any particular challenges or advantages?
As far as Philadelphia as a center for publishing, I feel there is some support, although the publishers that exist in Philadelphia now are sort of a scattered bunch. They’re all different sorts. I don’t feel we have a sort of unified presence, but we do have a lot of diversity.