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10 Indie Presses Looking for Literary Fiction
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10 Indie Presses Looking for Literary Fiction

Sub Club Specials (7.3.25) | Publishers ready and willing to read your novel, no agent necessary

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Justine Payton
Jul 03, 2025
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10 Indie Presses Looking for Literary Fiction
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Let’s talk about publishing literary fiction—the God(dess), high-brow, slightly (very) pretentious, MFA-vibes, gobsmackingly beautiful child of the literary world.

According to Writer’s Digest, literary fiction “focuses on style, character, and theme over plot—unlike most genre and commercial fiction.” In other words, you may not know where you’re going or why, but you’ll enjoy the mesmerizing (sometimes disorienting and hard-to-follow) journey to get there. It’s often defined in opposition to “commercial” or “genre” fiction, books that may sometimes follow an easier-to-predict storyline but also happen to make for a great read and adapt well to TV and film—think hero’s journey, romance (meet-cute, get together, break-up, get back together), murder mysteries where it was the boy-next-door all along, etc.

Jokes aside, literary fiction is in many ways at the heart of the ideals we hold dear as writers. It encompasses stories whose words and sentences sing and dance off the page; it is an author writing with such a deep grasp of humanity, of how to make music with language so you can’t help but be swept up in the writing, in the characters, in the emotions, in the visions evoked. For me, reading literary fiction is akin to an experience of awe. I’ll find myself rereading the same sentences over and over again, begging the literary spirits to endow me with the ability to craft such beautiful lines.

In terms of publishing, there are countless presses—Big Five and indie alike—that are seeking to publish literary fiction. They are the darlings of the publishing world, the award-winners, the prestigious pinnacle. And that means these novels can sell.

Glancing through Publishers Marketplace, there is hardly a day that goes by without a sale of literary fiction (except, of course, on the weekends). So what will make your literary fiction stand out? What does your novel need to grab the attention of a publisher?



The writing is spectacular

Really. It has to be so good that readers have a mini-orgasm just from reading a single line. Here are some examples from three books and authors I adore. Why not use the very best?

  • “No human being knew what life on Earth really looked like. How could they? They lived on the land, in the marginal kingdom of aberrant outliers. All the forests and savannas and wetlands and deserts and grasslands on all the continents were just afterthoughts, ancillaries to the Earth’s main stage.” Playground, Richard Powers

  • “The question was not death; living things die. It was love. Not that we died, but that we cared wildly, then deeply, for one person out of billions. We bound ourselves to the fickle, changing, and dying as if they were rock.” Maytrees, Annie Dillard

  • “Because to remember is to fill the present with the past, which meant that the cost of remembering anything, anything at all, is life itself. We murder ourselves, he thought, by remembering.” The Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Vuong

Are you crying? I’m crying.


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The ideas and themes are nuanced and evocative

Literary fiction provokes thought. It is, at the end of the day, an exploration of humanity, of what it means to be human and to exist in this world. That exploration can take many forms and many characters, but the depth is consistent. For example:

  • One recently published novel that I am absolutely in love with is Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou (Tin House, 2025), a literary retelling of the story of Bluebeard that “confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men, and the complicated reasons we stay captive to the monsters we love.” Tin House really says it best!

  • The Dissenters by Youssef Rakha (Graywolf, 2025) is another fantastic example of this, exploring the complicated evolution of Egypt across decades. Seen through the experiences of one woman, the novel weaves her past, present, and future together in mesmerizing ways, examining the ramifications of trauma—both on individual lives and in the wider context of a country in revolution.


The story is character-driven, and readers connect with your characters

The propulsion of a character’s transformation—of their journey throughout the course of the narrative—is key. Ramble through internality, through reminiscence and emotions, but make sure an intimate connection is made between your characters and your readers. For example:

  • Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book includes the following characters: a Black author on tour to promote his book; a young Black boy named Soot living in rural America; and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child accompanying the author on his tour. There are events and storylines surrounding these characters, but the real propulsion is in the characters themselves—in what is revealed about them and their journeys, the connections readers forge with them, and the revelations these connections reveal about what it means to be Black in America.

  • And to throw it back to a classic—how could I not?—think The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. A harrowing, intimate deep dive into Esther Greenwood’s breakdown, exploring the darkest and most hidden parts of the human mind. It is a novel that takes place primarily within the internal world of the character, and yet for decades, readers have remained captivated by it.


Literary fiction is wide-reaching. Magical realism, experimental fiction, historical, and contemporary fiction can all be included under the umbrella of literary fiction. But the core qualities discussed above stand the test of time.

If you think your novel fits into this esteemed genre, and it’s ready to go out into the world, where can you send your literary fiction? Agents, yes—but here we’ll dive into the publishers ready and willing to read your work (even without an agent).

Without further ado, here are 10 indie presses looking for literary fiction. ↓


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A guest post by
Justine Payton
Justine Payton is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and a published writer. An avid hiker and ecofeminist, she explores the themes of resilience and discovering wonder in the small things.
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