Updated, July 2024: They have always made it difficult to discover what is actually new on their website in terms of books. I have become increasingly convinced, that they weren’t publishing books regularly, but it was hard to make a call. This time I realized that by reading the summer catalogue here, and checking all the publication dates that the most recently published book was from 2022, even though the catalogue stresses that it’s from summer 2024, all the books in the new book section are from 2022 (something I was able to verify on Amazon). I’m not sure exactly what is going on here, but I personally would not submit.

City of Light Publishing is a small press with many imprints, based out of Buffalo, New York. In some ways City of Light is a new press, they only came to be known by this name in 2019, when they started to have more of a national and international reach. Before that, previous iterations were called Canisius College Press and Buffalo Heritage Press. You can learn more about their history here.

They are distributed by IPG, which had a bit of a mixed reputation in the past, but a fairly good recent track record, and a wide reach. It’s one of the biggest distributors in the United States now.

They have six imprints, all with separate submission guidelines.

CrissCross AppleSauce is their children’s picture book imprint. The covers are mostly excellent, and you can see their full catalog here, to get a feel for what they might be interested in publishing. They have a pretty substantial back catalog. Their submission guidelines are here.

Cross Your Fingers is their early readers and middle grade imprint. You can read their submission guidelines here. It’s important to note that this imprint is brand new, and the only title they’ve only published one title so far (another title is forthcoming). You can see it here.

Cross Your Heart, their young adult imprint is even less established, as nothing is listed. I’m always nervous about publishers entering a new market for the first time, even if they are semi-established elsewhere, so that’s something to keep in mind if you submit to Cross Your Heart. To see their submission guidelines, go here.

New Idea Press is their nonfiction imprint, which has already published a wide variety of books, that you can read about here. You can learn more about their submission guidelines here.

Blacklight Press is their fiction imprint, which they describe as publishing “stories from new perspectives, with diverse, interesting characters.” Their submission guidelines are here. You can see all their fiction books listed here, and it’s clear that they have more limited experience in this area.

Buffalo Heritage Press, one of the previous names for the press as a whole, is still going strong as an imprint. It’s not a surprise that this imprint focuses on “Buffalo authors telling Buffalo stories.” These stories can be fictional or nonfiction. You can read their guidelines here, and see their back catalog here.

To learn more, visit their general submission guidelines here.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2021 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.