The Short Publishing Genius Story

Believing in literature’s practical ability to create sympathy and therefore a better world, Publishing Genius exists to make the best books by devoted members of the global literary community, and to make them in the most interesting and progressive ways.

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Having published dozens of books of poetry and literary fiction, the press and the writing it champions has received numerous awards, been optioned for the screen, translated, and anthologized. PGP has been praised for its literary innovations in magazines from Publishers Weekly to The Believer to Flavorwire.com.

The small press was founded as a broadside project in 2006. The Baltimore City Paper named it Best Publishing House in 2009 and 2013. In 2011, Publishing Genius moved into its first office. In 2014 the office moved to Atlanta. Guests are welcome to come over for a cup of coffee or iced tea and have a chat. Email adam@publishinggenius.com to make an appointment!

Please visit our Press/Media page, or read a concise history of the press at our Tumblr. And here’s our famously obtuse mission statement, and here’s our page at Poets & Writers.

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What’s next? Who knows! Adam has spent the last several years (since 2011) as a publishing consultant, helping writers and businesses achieve their goals and dreams with their own books. You can find out more about that project at GoodBookDevelopers.com. GBD is completely separate from PGP, but the work allows Adam to find out more and more about the publishing world, and naturally Publishing Genius will be informed and motivated by those new new frontiers.

Submissions

I’d like to add an especially off-kilter book to the 2019 catalog. This book would be something that calls into question what a book even is, but is still friendly to readers. Think, like, form following content. More aha! than wtf? Think, like, a children’s picture book for adults, or an annotated guide to refrigerator magnets, or Vanishing Point. The ideal book will be unputdownable, fun to read, highly designed, delightful. Maybe jarring. Think, like, A Humument or AM/PM. Maybe a little distasteful is cool. Maybe the cover price will be $5, maybe it’ll cost $50 because it’s four volumes long. And hey, if you want to pitch a regular book, like a novella or short story or poetry collection or whatever, that’s cool—but when you do, make it funky. Give me a concrete idea of how we might subvert its bookiness.

Go Here to Submit

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Our Related Projects

Everyday Genius was the online journal from PGP that ran from 2009 till 2015. After almost six inspiring years, we “pivoted” from a venue that features original fiction and poetry to …
… Real Pants, a group blog that is focused on “Literature and the New Literary Community.”
The Chris Toll Prize was founded in 2013, and memorializes our friend and mentor, Chris Toll (d. 2012), by publishing one chapbook a year in his honor. Submissions for this are accepted in June.
On July 1, 2015 we launched Ebook Flights, our series for longer short work, which is available for ebook only. The first flight features fantastic fiction by Gabe Durham, Lily Hoang, and Bob Schofield.