Should I query literary agents or submit straight to small presses with this book?

Query agents if the book has a plausible shot at a five figure advance from a Big Five imprint and you can afford to spend two to three years finding out. Submit to small presses if the book is short, category specific, regional, formally odd, or in a genre the large houses have stopped buying, and you would rather be in print in eighteen months than in a query queue indefinitely.

That is the honest short answer, and it is a decision about this particular manuscript, not about your worth as a writer or the shape of your career. The same author can reasonably agent one book and small press the next.

What follows is the arithmetic and the mechanics behind that answer, because the money works differently on each path and so do the rights you keep.

What an agent does that a small press acquisitions editor does not

An agent works for you. An acquisitions editor works for the press. That single structural fact explains most of the difference in outcome.

The agent's job list, roughly in order of value to you: identifying which editors at which imprints are actively buying your kind of book right now, submitting to several of them simultaneously so that interest can become competition, negotiating the contract clause by clause, and holding back subsidiary rights so they can be sold separately later. Then, for the life of the book, chasing royalty statements, auditing them when the numbers look wrong, and being the person who makes the uncomfortable phone call when a publisher misses a deadline.

A small press acquisitions editor does the first part of that only. They decide whether the press wants the book. Then the press hands you its contract, which is usually close to non negotiable at the smallest houses and moderately negotiable at the mid sized ones. Nobody in that building is representing your interests, and nobody should pretend otherwise.

The practical consequence: if you go to a small press unagented, you are your own negotiator. That is workable, but it means you personally need to understand the rights and reversion clauses, or you need to pay a publishing attorney for a one time contract review.

Keep reading: What are the most common query letter errors that get me an instant form rejection?

Advance and royalty structures compared, and where the 15 percent commission lands

Standard US commission is 15 percent on domestic sales and typically 20 percent on foreign and film, split with a co agent. That number frightens people until they run it against the alternative.

Take an illustrative case. These are assumptions, not market data, chosen because they are round.

	Agented, trade imprint	Unagented, small press
Advance	$40,000	$1,000
Agent commission at 15%	$6,000	$0
Net advance to you	$34,000	$1,000
Hardcover royalty	10% of list, escalating	often n/a, paperback first
Trade paperback royalty	roughly 7.5% of list	frequently 10% to 15% of net receipts
Ebook royalty	25% of net receipts	25% to 50% of net receipts

The two royalty bases are not comparable, and this is where writers get caught. List royalty is a percentage of the cover price. Net receipts royalty is a percentage of what the publisher actually collects after the retailer or wholesaler discount, which is commonly in the 40 to 55 percent range.

Work it through on a $18.00 paperback. Trade imprint at 7.5 percent of list pays $1.35 per copy. Small press at 12 percent of net, where net is $18.00 less a 50 percent discount, pays 12 percent of $9.00, which is $1.08. The headline 12 percent is smaller in the hand than the headline 7.5 percent. Always ask what the percentage is a percentage of.

Now the volume question. At $1.35 a copy net of nothing, the $34,000 net advance above is the equivalent of roughly 25,000 copies of earnings paid up front and never returned if the book underperforms. A small press paying $1.08 a copy would need to sell about 31,500 copies to match it. Most small press titles do not.

Timeline reality: query to offer to shelf on each path

Speed is the small press's genuine advantage, and it is substantial.

• Agent path. Querying to an offer of representation: three months to two years, and a meaningful number of manuscripts never get there. Signing to going on submission: one to six months, because most agents will ask for a revision first. On submission to a deal: weeks to over a year. Deal to publication: commonly twelve to twenty four months, because the trade catalog is built two seasons ahead.
• Small press path. Submission to a decision: often one to six months, sometimes tied to a reading period. Contract to publication: commonly nine to eighteen months, occasionally faster at digital first houses.

Add it up. An agented book that goes well is realistically three to four years from first query to a copy in your hand. A small press book that goes well can be eighteen months to two years, start to finish.

If you are 52 and this is the family history you have been writing for a decade, that difference is not abstract.

Rights: which subsidiary rights each path typically takes

The contract is a list of rights, and the only question that matters is which ones leave your hands and how you get them back.

An agent will usually try to keep translation, film and television, audio, and sometimes first serial out of the primary grant, so those can be sold separately. A trade contract that grants world rights to the publisher is not automatically bad, but it should be paid for.

Small press contracts vary enormously. The good ones grant North American print and ebook rights for a defined term, leave audio and translation with the author, and include a clear reversion clause. The ones to walk away from grant world rights in all languages and all media for the full term of copyright with reversion tied only to the book being "available," which in the print on demand era means forever.

Three clauses to read before anything else, on either path:

1. Reversion. It should be triggered by measurable sales falling below a stated number in a stated period, not by "in print."
2. Option. An option on your next book is normal. An option on your next book in the same genre, exercisable only after publication of this one, is reasonable. An option on everything you write next is not.
3. Accounting. Statement frequency, payment timing, reserve against returns, and your right to audit.

Keep reading: Do I really need to register copyright before I start submitting my novel anywhere?

Genres and formats where small presses outperform

There are whole categories where the small press is not the consolation prize, it is the correct destination.

• Poetry collections, which the large houses buy very rarely.
• Short story collections by writers without a prior novel.
• Novellas and anything between 20,000 and 55,000 words, a length trade publishing struggles to price.
• Regional nonfiction: a state's ghost towns, a river, a city's food history. University and regional presses sell these steadily for years.
• Literary work in translation, and formally experimental fiction.
• Niche genre with a devoted readership, where a specialist press has a mailing list that converts better than a national campaign.

Note what these have in common: a defined, findable audience and modest print numbers. That is precisely the shape a small press is built for and a Big Five P&L is not.

Open reading periods versus year round query inboxes

Most agents read year round, close occasionally, and want a query letter with pasted pages. Most small presses read in windows, and many of those windows are two to six weeks long, once or twice a year.

This changes your workflow entirely. Agent querying is a continuous pipeline you top up as passes come in. Small press submitting is a calendar exercise: you need to know that a press you want opens in September, that it wants a full manuscript rather than a query, and that missing the window costs you six to twelve months.

Some presses also charge a reading fee for contest style open calls, typically in the $20 to $30 range. That is legitimate for a judged prize with a stated award, and a red flag when it is attached to ordinary acquisitions.

See how DraftAndQuery handles this for independent authorship and publishing

Can you do both at once, and how to disclose it

Yes, and most working writers do. There is no rule against querying agents while a manuscript sits with small presses. There is a strong convention about disclosure.

Tell an agent, at the point they request a full, which presses currently hold the manuscript. Agents care because a house that has already seen and passed on the book is off their submission list, and because a press about to offer changes their timeline.

Tell a small press the moment you sign with an agent, because your agent will want to take over that conversation.

If a small press offers while agents hold fulls, that is a competing offer and it works exactly like an agent offer: notify everyone holding the manuscript, give a two week decision deadline, and be genuinely willing to accept the offer you have.

Deciding by book rather than by career

Run this sequence on the actual manuscript in front of you.

1. Word count and category. Outside the trade band, or unclassifiable? Small press.
2. Audience shape. National and broad, or specific and findable? Broad favors agents.
3. Your timeline. Do you need this book out within two years for a concrete reason? Small press.
4. Money required. Does the project need an advance to finish, for research or travel? Agent.
5. Rights you care about. Planning audio or translation yourself? Read the small press grant very carefully first.
6. Your capacity to negotiate alone. If none and you cannot budget a contract review, the agent path buys you a negotiator.

Two or more answers pointing the same way is your path for this book. It is not your path forever.

Keeping both pipelines straight

Running agent queries and small press windows at the same time is where good books get lost: a press that opened last week and closed before you noticed, a full sent with the wrong draft, an agent who was never told which houses had already seen it.

DraftAndQuery tracks each manuscript version and each submission against the agent or press holding it, with reading period dates, response windows and a follow up queue per publisher. When an offer arrives and you have two weeks to notify everyone, the list of who to email is already built.