Print Book Sales are Down; Quirk Books Pauses Publishing and Lays Off Employees; 5 Submission Calls; Reader Success Stories.

This monthly column is published on the fourth Thursday of every month, and is an opportunity for me to share information that doesn’t fit anywhere else in our publication. This includes a wide range of opportunities for writers, news and information, and subscriber’s recent success stories.

Also as someone who has been a long term member of the literary community, I have increasingly wondering about what role in this community the CLMP plays in the literary community currently. If you have any thoughts on this I’d love to hear them at support@authorspublish.com. Full disclaimer, I am in the early stages of putting an article together related to this topic. 

Opportunities:

The Hooghly Review has a special call for submissions through August 15th for their short story special issue “The Many Lives of Atlas A“. It will be a collection of short stories where the main character or a supporting character of the story is Atlas A. They share character details that must be included as part of the submission call which you can see here. The deadline to submit is 15th August.

Bare Bones Publishing, a traditional press based in India, is accepting submissions for their anthology, The Bare Bones Book of Speculative Fiction. They say “Stories may be folkloric, contemporary, historical, otherworldly, magic realist, surreal, dark, horror, etc. Please avoid explicitly sexual content, gore and other violent fantasies, and the usual tropes—we agree with Clarkesworld on “hard sells.” That said, we don’t intend to restrict you. Unleash your imagination and surprise us.” Stories must be between 800 and 3,000 words in length, and they close to submissions on August 25th (Indian time).

Bare Bones Publishing is also accepting submissions till August 15th for The Bare Bones Book of Humour. Work for this call should be humorous prose writing in English. They will consider fiction and creative nonfiction. Work should be between 500 and 2000 words in length.

Lowestoft Chronicles is currently open to submissions through August 15th. They are open to a variety of genres but preference is “given to humorous submissions with an emphasis on travel”. You can read their most recent issue here.

Two Thirds North is a print journal of transnational literature, this annual anthology focuses on publishing creative work from all over the world. They will be open through the 31st of September.

News:

Quirk Books has put a temporary pause on their publishing program, which is to say they will not be acquiring or developing new books for six months. They laid off a number of employees. This happened right after unionization, so there were questions raised around that which the founding editor and owner David Borgenicht denied. You can learn more here.

Print book sales overall are down in the first half of 2025 according to Circana Bookscan. The slow down started in May, although overall print book sales are only down -1 percent based on units sold. The big shifts happened in adult nonfiction which was down 3 million units compared to the same period in 2024, and middle grade readers, which was down by 1 million units. If you have a Publishers Marketplace membership and want to read the full story, please go here.

Subscriber Success Stories:

Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi’s chapbook, Uncensored Snapshots, was published by Chestnut Review.

Sheryl Clough’s chapbook Inhaling the Salish Sea: Poems from Whidbey Island was published by boats against the current.

John Michael Flynn’s book Answer Only, is reviewed in the summer edition of Rain Taxi.

J.E. Gillespie’s work Y(our) Karma was featured in Harrow House Journal.

Cithara Patra’s flash fiction, A Little More Spice was published in CafeLit, and their micto-fiction, The Shell, was published in 50-Word Stories.

Jill Smith’s short story Delicate Cycle was published in Back Roads Literary Review.

Tony Dawson had three poems published in Offcourse, as a well as a poem entitled Portrait of WH Auden at 58 published in London Grip New Poetry, and a short story entitled Snow White Meets Little Red Riding Hood in Literally Stories.

John A. Tures’s short story The Last Road Race was published by Feed the Holy.

Marty B. Rivers short story, The Little Girl Who Lives On Berta’s Road, was published in Four Tulips.

Amanda Steel’s article Masking is common in autistic women – here’s why I regret it, was published in Stylist and a free version of it entitled As an autistic woman, I’ve ‘masked’ for most of my life – it’s one of my biggest regrets was published on MSN.

CM Pickard’s poems Silent Killer, Some dreams fade and Curiosity were published online by Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine.

Louisa Prince’s short story Broken Vows was published online by Everscribe.

Xavier Martinez’s Creep Up the Underground was published in Borderline Tales.

Laura Frost’s creative nonfiction, Tundra, was published in Perceptions Magazine.

Corey D. Evans‘ short story was published in Loki, an anthology from Flame Tree Publishing.

Debbie Robson‘s  chapbook A Glimpse was published by boats against the current.

Charles Sartorius’s horror story Riven was featured in Metastellar.

Laura Augustine’s poem Nocturne: Winter, appeared Toasted Cheese.

Masimba Musodza’s short story Our Soil will be in the forthcoming Afrofuturism Short Stories anthology by Flame Tree Publishing.

Duane Herrmann’s Was it Luck? was published by 105 Meadow Lark Reader, and three poems appeared in Listen and Be Heard, and one more, That Night, was published by Text Power Telling.

Daniel Christensen’s Lunar Light was published in Four Tulips and another poem, A Storm of Resplendence, was published in Lucky Lizard Journal.

Mitchell Waldman‘s book The Visitor was published by All Things That Matter Press.

Lisa Wilde has four paintings published in the Two Hawks Quarterly.

Rachel Turney had photos published in the June issues of Wild Roof Journal, Pink Disco (which is NSFW, Please only click if over 18), and Loud Coffee Press.

Kevin Anthony Brown‘s essay-review, An American Apart: Frank Observations, was published by New English Review.

Valeriya Salt‘s novel Dive Beyond Eternity was published by Northodox Books.

Kevin Eric Paul’s story Beyond the Sea was published by Sci Phi Journal.

Bio: Caitlin Jans has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-founder of Authors Publish and The Poetry Marathon. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including: The Literary Review of Canada, The Fiddlehead, Jelly Bucket, The Penn Review, The Adroit Journal, and Killer Verse. Her prose and poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, BILiNE, The Best Small Fictions Anthology, and The Best of the Net. You can learn more at www.caitlinthomson.com.