It’s February! Which means today is the first day of Reading Independent Publishers Month, an event being co-hosted by Lizzy and myself. We hope you’ve all been raiding your TBR piles or madly spending all your hard-earned dosh on lots of lovely indie press books, ready to share them with everyone – it should be great fun!


In the run up to the month, the question has arisen as to what in reality counts as an Independent Publisher. That’s actually a difficult question to answer; some are obvious, when we’re talking about a smaller outfit printing and issuing their own works, like Renard Press. However, what about University presses? How can you tell whether a publisher is part of a bigger conglomerate. It *isn’t* straightforward, and so we thought we would offer a few hints or guidelines.

First off, here are some useful links:

Independent Publishers list: http://www.indiepublishers.co.uk/independent-publishers
The Independent Alliance: https://www.faber.co.uk/independent-alliance
Northern Fiction Alliance: http://northernfictionalliance.com
List of Scottish Independent Publishers: https://booksfromscotland.com/publishers
A small press directory: https://contemporarysmallpress.com/press
International Sites: https://www.alliance-editeurs.org/-reseaux-linguistiques,017-?lang=en
Publishers from Germany, Austria, Switzerland: https://www.indiebook.de
American Presses: https://medium.com/the-nonconformist/the-big-big-list-of-indie-publishers-and-small-presses-5e83e9522b5c

It’s worth noting that none of these are a complete listing, and some may contain publishers who aren’t indies! But they may well provide guidelines, particularly if you have a particular book in mind.

Another way to check is to have a look at a publisher’s website – many will proudly proclaim their independence, and their About page may give you more info on their status.

However, none of this is necessarily definitive, so we guess the best advice is to go with your gut. If a book is from a name which doesn’t seem to be connected with one of the main publishing giants, and you want to read it, go for it! The main point of this month is to read as many wonderful books as you can as well as supporting the smaller publishers who produce them. Lizzy has created a Mr Linky for you to let us know what you’ve been reading and you can find this here:

https://readindies2021.blogspot.com/2021/01/our-indie-bookshelf.html

Enjoy and share your reading for #ReadIndies during February – we can’t wait to see what you come up with! 😀