University Presses: A Viable Path for Literary Fiction Careers

When Deesha Philyaw’s short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, first went out on submission, her agent targeted a wide range of publishers, according to Slate. Rejections rolled in for the first month, but soon after, an offer arrived from West Virginia University Press. Following publication, so did accolades: The book went on to become a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for fiction and won the Story Prize, among other awards. More recently, Philyaw scored a seven-figure deal with Mariner Books/HarperCollins for her next work of fiction.

Philyaw is not the only author to have launched their fiction writing career at a university press. 

• Marie-Helene Bertino, whose latest novel, Beautyland, was a New York Times “Best Book of 2024 (So Far),” first published with the University of Iowa Press after winning the Iowa Short Fiction Award.
• Rion Amilcar Scott, who won the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize, published his debut short story collection, Insurrections, with the University Press of Kentucky.
• The initial publisher of Alexander McCall Smith’s international bestselling series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency was Polygon, then owned by Edinburgh University Press.

Authors and their agents have long turned to university presses for nonfiction projects. But should they do the same for literary fiction? For acquiring editors at these presses, the answer is a solid yes, and agents are catching on.

Fiction submissions are increasing at university presses. “Our numbers are slowly climbing: This past year we received 220 fiction submissions; the year before, 172; the year before that, 146,” says Dennis Lloyd, director at the University of Wisconsin Press. He and his team publish seven works of fiction each year, aiming for four novels and three short story collections. While most fiction is submitted directly by the author, Lloyd says they’ve begun receiving more agented submissions “as we’ve established a stronger reputation in literary fiction.”

Jim McCoy, director at the University of Iowa Press, no longer keeps track of the number of fiction submissions he and his co-editor receive each year, but his guess is that it’s “in the hundreds”; from these they acquire around four novels and two short story collections. Projects arrive from a mix of sources, says McCoy, and increasingly from agents.

The University Press of Kentucky also receives agented submissions, but anyone can submit to their New Poetry and Prose series or Screen Door Press imprint, says acquisitions editor Margaret Kelly. She and her colleagues publish two to four fiction books per year.

One way university presses attract submissions directly from authors is through contests. The University of Iowa Press’s annual short fiction contest is screened and judged by the Iowa Writers Workshop and does not carry a reading fee (but their poetry contest does). The winners of both contests are published by the press. Similarly, a fee is associated with poetry contests at the University of Wisconsin Press, where winners also receive publication as their prize. (Since the press does not have a fiction contest, they accept fiction submissions during their open submissions periods, and fees are not involved.) The University Press of Kentucky does not specifically hold contests, nor does it charge fees for any submissions.

Fee-charging writers’ contests can be predatory, as Writer Beware warns, but university press contests are an exception, according to Barbara Jones, an agent at Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency. “These presses are not looking to make money on contests,” she says. “They may well lose money publishing the book.” McCoy at Iowa says, “Books cost tens of thousands of dollars to edit, produce, market, and distribute. And often, given the reputation of the prizes, the winners are suddenly on the radar of agents and commercial publishers.” Jenni Ferrari-Adler, a literary agent at Verve, agrees. “University press prizes can be very prestigious. If someone came to me and said they won the Iowa Short Fiction Award or the [University of Pittsburgh Press’s] Drue Heinz Award, I would be impressed, especially if it’s judged by an established writer.”

While authors don’t need an agent to submit to university presses, an agent can still be helpful for both parties. While Lloyd and his team at Wisconsin “don’t have a preference one way or the other,” Kelly at Kentucky appreciates agented submissions. “Outside of New Poetry and Prose and Screen Door Press, I only review fiction submitted by an agent. This means submissions have been vetted, and it cuts down on the number I’m wading through,” she says. For McCoy at Iowa, author negotiations are “relatively straightforward and quick” as compared to those with agents. “If negotiations become too complicated, I usually tell the other party this is becoming a bit more than we can entertain and we need to fish or cut bait. Usually we end up fishing,” he says.

Jones feels that an agent should be involved in contract negotiations if possible. “Agents understand what industry standards are, and every agency has or should have business affairs and legal affairs backup. If an agent is willing to negotiate the contract for you, that’s a value,” she says. Outside of the advance, “there are a handful of things to look out for,” says Ferrari-Adler. She suggests that unagented authors contact the Authors Guild to check contract language and ensure that their subsidiary rights are being protected.

University presses differ from trade publishers in a few areas. At the University of Wisconsin Press and the University Press of Kentucky, fiction submissions must undergo peer review before they are presented to the university’s editorial board for approval. External readers are chosen “carefully and intentionally,” Kelly explains, and the acquiring editor works with the author to implement the feedback. “I often tell my authors to think of it as a high-level fiction workshop,” she says. “If multiple readers give the same advice, it’s probably to the benefit of the book to implement it!”

Another key difference is that advances are typically modest. Yet money isn’t necessarily the deciding factor in choosing a publisher, according to Ferrari-Adler. “For many authors, a bigger advance is enticing, but it’s far from the only goal,” she says. “If you’re in academia, it’s helpful to find a publisher to advance your career. And if you have a book with a university press and it gets some traction and wins some awards, you’re in a good position to move to one of the Big Five.”

To Ferrari-Adler, the experience of publishing with a university press could be “parallel to working with a bigger house, if you find an editor who really gets your book.” Also, “University presses are presumably free from some commercial pressures,” she says. Jones makes a similar point. “A judge of a contest can pull out a manuscript of value that may not suit the fashions of the time. Maybe it’s ahead of the curve or behind, but it’s quality and doesn’t have to consider comp titles that worked or didn’t work for a trade publisher,” she says. “Judges can choose books they genuinely love.”

And finally, while trade publishers prioritize books with mainstream appeal, university presses may have a more niche or regional focus. “We have a vast and loyal audience in Kentucky and Appalachia, so it’s to our benefit and to our authors’ benefit to publish regional fiction,” says Kelly. Lloyd also publishes regional fiction (set in Wisconsin) but emphasizes that style and craft is “never less important than setting or topic.”

The financial security of some university presses may be more tenuous than before. Now that their grants have been rescinded by the National Endowment for the Arts, some independent and nonprofit publishers are facing an uncertain future. “Endowments and grants have traditionally allowed university presses ways to remain economically stable that are not available to trade publishers,” says Jones, but “right now, we don’t know what will happen to the not-for-profit aspects of the university press model, for obvious reasons.” To Ferrari-Adler, university presses can be more stable than some small presses because “they’re part of an institution and less dependent on one person. There’s probably more of an infrastructure,” she says.

“As a not-for-profit press, some kind of underwriting is imperative for us to operate,” says McCoy. But although the University of Iowa Press receives “a pretty healthy” subsidy from their parent institution, they have not sought federal funding for several years. So far, the University Press of Kentucky has not been directly affected by federal budget cuts, either, says Kelly. For Lloyd, “The idea of scholarly publishing being in crisis has been around so long … we should think of it as a feature, not a bug.” All university presses might need to reconsider their list size in the future, says Lloyd, but the University of Wisconsin Press “will not be terminating any existing contracts, and we will remain committed to creative writing as a key part of our list.”

Bottom line: Although some writers may assume that a big New York publisher is preferable to a university press, such thinking is “misguided,” says Jones. “University press publication is the first choice for certain kinds of books, depending on the press. These are experienced editors, highly educated and knowledgeable in the fields they publish in.” She suggests that writers intrigued by university presses go onto their websites, enter contests that seem applicable to their work, and “always read books published by these presses.”

For McCoy, university presses offer a world of possibilities. “We’ve had bestsellers. We’ve been nominated for the National Book Award, won an American Book Award, numerous PEN awards/nominations,” he says. “And I would say the same about many of our sister university presses. Just because we are small and in flyover country doesn’t mean we can’t be players on an international stage.”