Vine Leaves Press is an international press with staff in the United States, Germany, Greece, England, and beyond. They were founded in 2011 as a literary journal and started publishing vignette collections in 2014. Vine Leaves Press publish books in a variety of genres including memoirs, coming of age, literary and multi-genre novels, poetry and short story collections, and reference books. If you sign up for their email newsletter on their landing page you are sent a digital sampler of past publications.
They have a very polished and well executed website. Personally I struggle a little with the video aspect of many of the pages and find it distracting, but I am sure it appeals to others.
They are print on demand with no traditional distribution. Their website is very much geared towards readers rather than writers and they are clearly actively trying to build their email list, which is always a good sign.
A number of the books they have published are in fact written by the Publisher, Publishing Director, and Publishing Associate. Still about 20% of the books they have published were written by people on the masthead of the press, although a number of these individuals were hired by the press after their books were published.
Their covers are a little mixed but mostly impressive. They offer royalties 40% of net which is preferable, but that might be minus distribution charge, which is presented in a kind of confusing way in the FAQs. Although a percentage of net is very much preferable to of gross.
They have very detailed FAQ and submission guidelines and all authors must be at least moderately active on a wide range of social media. They go into the details of why in the FAQs.
Please follow all of their submission guidelines. To learn more, go here. Their open reading period starts on December 1st 2024, and ends on January 31st, 2025.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2020 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.
She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.
