The 3 Independent Publishers That Produced 3 National Book Award Biggies for 2011

If you haven't already heard, Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones recently won the coveted National Book Award for fiction.

The book was published by Bloomsbury, the independent London-based press founded in 1986 and most famous for publishing the Harry Potter books. The company does not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

I was also very heartened to learn that two of the four finalists were published by independent publishers:

Andrew Krivak's The Sojourn was published by Bellevue Literary Press. This is the same press that published Tinkers, the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction.

Founded in 2005, BLP is a nonprofit project of the New York University School of Medicine and publishes fiction and nonfiction that combines the literary with the scientific, with a special emphasis on medicine.

BLP does accept unsolicited fiction manuscripts and nonfiction proposals both by mail and email. Be sure to check out the submission guidelines.



Lastly, Edith Pearlman's Binocular Vision was published by Lookout Books, an imprint of the Department of Creative Writing at the North Carolina - Wilmington.

The press, which publishes fiction, nonfiction, memoir and poetry, was founded by the director of the university's Publishing Laboratory, where students learn the publishing process, and the editor of Ecotone, the school's literary magazine that focuses on literary stories that have a scientific slant.

While Lookout Books does not accept unsolicited manuscripts, authors can apparently get a shot at submitting their book-length manuscripts by first getting work published through Ecotone.



Interestingly enough, all of the books in the other NBA categories of nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature were published by major houses.

For those of you who don't know, last year's NBA winner for fiction, The Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon, was published by independent publisher McPherson & Company.

Hopefully this year's strong showing for independents sends a strong message to major houses that having the guts to publish high-quality fiction, despite lacking a 100%-guaranteed bestseller status, is worth the risk.

Happy writing!