There are five publishers who dominate bookstores and major media platforms. They have countless imprints, big budgets, major distribution networks, and hundreds of years of connections. Oftentimes, authors want to publish with these presses because they want to maximize exposure; they want to be read.<\/p>\n
But not every author works with them.\u00a0<\/strong>Not every author has a literary agent, a requirement for those publishers.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not always because of quality either. Sure, agents sign authors they find talented, but they also do it with dollar signs for eyeballs. They do it based on gut feeling, on social media followers, on connections and celebrity, on what they believe those publishers want.\u00a0<\/p>\n They get things wrong sometimes too. Some publishers don\u2019t want those books they thought would sell\u00a0after all, perhaps because of a difficult sales pitch or because the publisher isn\u2019t looking for that kind of book at the\u00a0time of the pitch.<\/p>\n Other times, authors don\u2019t pursue the big five publishers at all.<\/strong>\u00a0They see their quiet book in their niche market that they love and they see indie presses<\/a> taking chances on tiny books they would be proud to bring into the world, and they head straight for the submissions portal\u2013agent or no agent.\u00a0<\/p>\n And sometimes, those small books make big splashes.<\/p>\n They catch the attention of major publishers and pave the way for a successful author career after them. <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n From Tin House to People Magazine\u2019s Book of the Week to bestselling Penguin Random House superstar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Want to hear a fun fact?<\/p>\n Too bad, I\u2019m going to tell you anyway.<\/p>\n Annie Hartnett was the first author I ever interviewed for Independent Book Review (outdated link here<\/a>!). Her novel from\u00a0Tin House Books<\/a>,\u00a0Rabbit Cake<\/strong><\/em>, was the second book we ever reviewed. I launched IBR with two books reviewed: Christopher D. DiCicco\u2019s\u00a0So My Mother, She Lives in the Clouds<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Rabbit Cake<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know why she was so incredibly kind to talk to a lowly, just-starting-out book blogger like me, but she responded quickly and compassionately to my interview request, helping me launch the thing that would become my full time job five years later.<\/p>\n Rabbit Cake\u00a0<\/em>is an absolute blast of a debut novel. Narrated by a voicy 10-year-old, it tells the story of a family\u00a0grieving the loss of their sleepwalking mother in a variety of different ways, from cooking hundreds of rabbit cakes to a husband wearing mom\u2019s clothes and lipstick around the house. It did so well that it caught the attention of People Magazine, who named it a book of the week back in 2017.<\/p>\n From there, Hartnett was picked up by Ballantine Books (an imprint of\u00a0Penguin Random House) for her second novel,\u00a0Unlikely Animals<\/em>, and then\u00a0The Road to Tender Hearts<\/em>, her most recent book that knocked it out of every single park. It\u2019s hilarious, and it\u2019s soft, and it\u2019s got a sweet through-line narrative of a caring uncle who will spend every last dollar of his lottery money on helping his grieving nephew and niece. And if he finds his high school crush across the country while he\u2019s doing it? It wouldn\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n Tin House, the indie publisher of\u00a0Rabbit Cake<\/em>\u00a0and admittedly one of my all-time favorite presses, saw greatness in Hartnett, and all she\u2019s done is thrive since she crossed their threshold.<\/p>\nHere are five authors who went from indie presses to Big Five publishers.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Annie Hartnett<\/h3>\n