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Where can I find quality newly published books (~last 12 months)? I’ve used wikipedia"list of literary award winners", which led to some exceptional reads, but most are “institutional” and mainstream and I'd like to explore outside of that. Besides here ofc :)
The other answer is great, but adding on to that: find indie, small, or micro-presses and follow what they're putting out. Some I follow are FC2 (arguably the best English press in the world), Corona/Samizdat (best micro-press), Salò, Inside the Castle, Open Letter, Fitzcarraldo (best translated, though their English-language works leave something to be desired), Atlas, Amphetamine Sulphate (though more than a tad edgy), 11:11 (I reviewed a book of theirs, Collected Voices), Tilted Axis Press, Charco, Archipelago, Tough Poets, Isolarii, Pushkin, Peirene, Penned in the Margins , Transit, Galley Beggar, Ugly Duckling, Giramondo are all great and of varying sizes. There was an excellent organization keeping track of small presses, but they shut down a couple months ago. I can pull up my full list later if you want more.
I would love the full list posted somewhere, your contemporary knowledge of the publishing scene is vanishingly rare and really appreciated. Small presses finding a successful niche is not only a good way to discover new books, it's also a source of hope that literary culture can survive what has already happened and what is to come.
If I'm being honest, it's my girlfriend who's knowledge is vast; she reads more contemporary lit. I'll ask her to send me the list later today.
Dropped
From an unnamed source in the literary world who seems to be legit: "You have to understand, a Big Five publishing house puts out ~75 books in a year. Typical year? - 50 don’t sell at all and are a clear financial loss; 15 sell enough to recoup the advance and maybe the overhead for all the work that went in; 5 are profitable but max out at modestly-to-moderately so; 5 are big hits that, along with all the ancillaries and back catalog, make the house’s nut for that year." And they don't know which their hits are going to be, so they're not taking chances with any of them. They're all going to be from established writers who have some kind of audience, people with nepotistic connections so deep you'll get paid in some form just for making the attempt, or at least plausibly contain the elements of 90% of the monster hits: romance and/or young adult and/or thriller with sci-fi or fantasy elements. I haven't found a satisfying answer for where to find quality new authors myself: new books, yes, but usually by writers who had a publishing deal 15 years ago before the bottom dropped out. My forays into the morass of the self-published doesn't tell me who is writing stuff that I might be interested in so much as who is the most effective promoter of their personal brand on social media. I'm sure there's great stuff out there, but how the hell does anyone find them? If you're not fluent in digital marketing or won't shill your work for a decade, your lifetime reach is even smaller than that of a small-town self-published writer 50 years ago. It's not like everyone can write a picaresque novel about New Orleans, kill themselves, and then have their obsessive grieving mother keep trying to get it published until a professor of literature agrees to read it and becomes its unlikely champion. The best bet for now seems to be to look for translations of books written by authors in non-US markets, or to learn a foreign language and go the source.
Asterism—Collection of presses. Several are great. 11:11 Press—Consistently good. Action Books—Hit-or-miss. Alternating Current Press—Best Small Fictions is pretty good. Rest is mostly misses. Anvil Press—A Feed Dog Book is good. The rest not. Vancouver. Apogee Press—Poetry. Lives up to the name. BlazeVOX Burning Deck—Closed but was great Calamari—Consistently exceptional. Circumference—Consistently good. Never great. Contra Mundum—Consistently great. Ellipsis Press—Quite good. Inside the Castle—Consistently good. Kelsey Street Press—Her WIP would be a good fit. Metatron—Mean to read them. Perugia Press—Good. Publishes one contest winner per year. Spiral Editions—Diary of A String blew me away. Haven’t tried any other poets yet. Ugly Duckling Presse—Brilliant more often than most. Good or great otherwise. Atlas—Great avant-garde republishings. Coach House Books—Consistently Excellent Corona/Samizdat Press—Slovenian American expats. Rick bricks. Almost always brilliant. Dead Ink Books—Consistently Great. FC2 Galley Beggar—Largely ephemeral, occasionally eternal. Giramondo Grove Atlantic Isolarii—Subscription plan. All good or great. New Directions The Journal of Experimental Fiction—Consistently amazing. Milkweed—Consistently good. Penned in the Margins—Consistently great. Six Gallery Press—Consistently good Raw Dog Screaming Press—Edgy and experimental, a winning combo. Salò Press—Hipster-punks. Tough Poets Press—Reprints of forgotten works. Largely great books. English translations Archipelago Books—Good, broad selection. Several exceptional works. Charco Press—Latin America. No clue on translation quality, only that the originals are generally great. Dalkey Fitzcarraldo Open Letter—University of Rochester’s translations. Translations are good. Peirene—Phenomenal European works. Pushkin Press Tilted Axis Press—Translator of The Vegetarian coasting off success. Asian lit. Translations are fine. Transit Books—Consistently exceptional. Local business (Oakland).
All of these at least one of us has read at least three books from. No comment means we didn't have one originally (I've memorized details of most of these) and I think it's mainstream enough for me to not add one now.