Authors Publish was founded in 2014 by Caitlin and Jacob Jans. The core team has since expanded to include Emily Harstone, Ella Perry, and S. Kalekar.
The initial mission of Authors Publish was to help writers find homes for their short creative work without paying a fee. We wanted to push back against resources charging for information and publications requiring writers to pay fees for their work to be considered. We consider fees to be a form of gatekeeping, and we believe fees reduce real diversity and accessibility. Subscribing to Authors Publish has and always will be free for this reason.
Authors Publish still regularly reviews literary journals, now we also review manuscript publishers that are open to direct submissions, and feature additional opportunities for writers, including grants, anthologies, fee-free contests, and fellowships. You can learn more about our long-term guiding principles here, and more about our history here.
Although our focus has broadened over the years, our goal has remained the same: to make quality information widely accessible.
To support this we’ve also published many free eBooks, including Submit, Publish, Repeat, which had been widely taught at the university level, and is now in its 7th edition. In 2021 we also launched the Lecture Series at Authors Publish, offering many quality lectures by writers like Emily Colin, Kimiko Hahn, Kim Addonizio, Eugenia Leigh, and Kwame Dawes.
Initially Authors Publish was fully funded by revenue from Google Ads, but over the years the revenue made through them was radically reduced, and we needed to change our strategy. This motivated us to start The Writer’s Workshop at Author’s Publish in 2016, which combines the same quality information offered on Authors Publish with personalized, in-depth feedback.
Because our courses rely on in-depth individual feedback, there is a cost involved with attending them, but the cost helps support instructors and funds all of the information we give away for free. There are scholarships available for some courses and we hope to expand these offerings eventually, but we are a very small team.
In spite of being a small team, we still answer almost every email that comes in ourselves, to the best of our abilities.
We acknowledge that we are are far from perfect, and are always trying to learn and grow, both as individuals and as an organization. If you ever have a complaint, question, update, concern, or a query of any kind, we are always happy to answer any email sent to support@authorspublish.com.
