The NEA Crisis
Independent Publishing at a Crossroads
At the end of last week, many independent presses received a letter that was probably not surprising but devastating nonetheless. The NEA canceled what I'm guessing is all the active grants. I haven't been able to confirm yet that it was 100%, but based on what I've seen and heard, it's as close to "total cancellation" as one can get.
Given we're nearly halfway through 2025 and many if not all of these presses have already spent a large portion of their allotment but not been reimbursed, the effects could go beyond just losing out on future funding. If the NEA won't honor those expenses, presses could find themselves between a rock and a hard place trying to balance budgets this year.
An Urgent Call to Action
So there is a current and immediate crisis. Please, if you have the means, go buy a few books and/or donate and/or do something to support the presses that you care about. This will likely also impact presses that don't receive NEA funding, because at least for the next few weeks, the focus and attention will be on supporting the NEA-funded presses, potentially diminishing sales, attention, and donations to non-NEA funded presses.
On top of this NEA news, there are the many attempts to defund higher education institutions and diminish funding for another crucial tentpole that's been buoying the American writing community for decades. And small publishers’ distribution networks, while somewhat stabilized compared to a year ago, is still on less than firm footing after SPD's demise.
Like I said, this is a crisis. Again, before reading below, please go support an independent press if you have the means.
The Devil's Bargain: My Experience with NEA Funding
When I was managing editor at Les Figues, we received NEA grants. I'm not going to speak for any other person associated with Les Figues or publisher here, but here's my takeaway from that experience and just about all the grants we received at Les Figues: While they were vital to ensuring the press's ability to operate, they weren't nearly as helpful as they appeared on the surface.
The first issue is just the time and effort the grant requires—from the hours writing and editing the proposal to the reporting and billing on the other side. Once those hours are taken into consideration, the value of the grant drops significantly. This work isn't something that’s additive to a press. It's subtractive: we did this work instead of making and marketing books.
Maybe if the press gets large enough that it can hire someone dedicated to this task, it truly makes sense. But even in that instance, it’s a decision to utilize a large portion of resources that could otherwise be used for core activities.
Second, the way the grants are set up means that you generally don't get money to just publish your books exactly how you would or want to. At Les Figues, we always had to wrap the book publishing alongside other activities and projects and events in very specific ways. Running after these grants risks putting a press into mission drift: is the money actually going to the press's core mission or is it pushing it to do activities that distract us from our core mission?
We (and by "we," I mean my editorial director Teresa Carmody) were good at figuring out how to make whatever happened with the grant activities fit the Les Figues mission. But many of those activities weren't book-making. This meant we avoided any real mission drift, but it also reduced the time and resources we had to do the one activity that brought in non-grant and non-donation funding: selling books.
Getting the grants, then, also makes you even more dependent on receiving future grants.
The grants do (or at least did) provide value beyond the basic monetary support. Receiving NEA, state, and local grants are a seal of approval. They offer opportunities to network and enter new spaces that are otherwise blocked off.
I don't think we could have gotten to the size and scale we achieved at Les Figues' height without the NEA and other grants, but it simultaneously created challenges that restricted us.
Or, to put it another way: it was a deal with the devil. Maybe it made sense for some publishers, maybe it didn't for others. In retrospect, I think it generally benefited Les Figues. But either way, it's not free money and it's not a blanket or ideal solution.
Building a Different Model: The Offending Adam Case Study
Now the NEA is, functionally, no more for the publishing community. Even if some future President revives this program, we're talking many many years if not decades before the damage is undone.
What do presses do in this situation? Since my experience with NEA and other similar arts grants, I've been wary about the notion of building a press's operations to be dependent on them.
When we launched v2.0 of The Offending Adam a few years ago, we talked about going down the route of 501(c)3 and running after grants. The consensus amongst the editors was that we had little interest in spending time chasing grants and donors and doing reporting. Whatever time and energy we had, we wanted to devote to actually editing and publishing.
So from that starting point, we built a publishing operating model with the goal of doing the following:
Pay authors
Cover operations costs
Create enough profit to ensure long-term stability
(If possible) pay editors a nominal stipend
We made a run of it. The approach was to do monthly digital chapbooks. A portion of each chapbook was free for all readers, and to read the full publication you had to become a member for a monthly subscription. We had different subscriber rates that corresponded with different percentages of those rates going to authors. Basically, the "higher level" you were, the higher % of your subscription payment went directly to the author.
Author pay was based on total subscription revenue. We established a minimum payment for every author. Then if we achieved enough subscribers and subscriber revenue, we would pay above that minimum threshold.
Within about 2 months, enough subscribers joined so that we started exceeding the minimum author payment. That revenue also covered all of our (albeit small) operational costs.
We showed proof of concept. There's a way to do this with minimal upfront investment and no chasing donors or grants. (Each editor put in a small amount of money to get things off the ground.)
The one thing we didn't achieve is #4: We were never able to pay ourselves a stipend. Which is why I say we showed proof of concept but we didn't quite achieve escape velocity. It's possible that we would have if we'd kept at it (we slowed down after about a year, and paused operations again after about 2 years), but we weren't able to keep up that momentum as we collectively had more kids, started new jobs, and moved into new homes.
(Side note: if any publisher out there wants to talk about operational models, please DM me and let's talk.)
The Road Ahead: Reimagining Literary Publishing
Here's what I think I'm trying to say (to bury the lede very deeply, even for a Substack post). There are options to publish with economic sustainability. But what it takes is being honest and objective about the current literary and economic landscape, and starting operations planning with those as givens.
A few generations of presses were able to say "we're going to go the 501(c)3 to NEA grant route." And we got so many great presses and so many great books out of that. But that chapter is closing. Has closed.
It's going to change what books are made. How those books are made. Where, how, and why they are distributed.
I think it's ok for us to grieve for what's been lost, because the era was special. There has been an explosion of literary cultural production for decades now. The number and overall diversity of people who were able to become writers and publishers, the voices and stories that were brought to life—it's been beautiful, and I'm lucky that I got to experience it.
But it's over, and while we grieve we also need to be actively seeking new and different ways of publishing and finding audiences.
Here's my first guess as to how this will play out. As with any big prediction, it's destined to be totally wrong. But here goes...
I think there will be four primary paths for independent presses:
Presses in states that are reacting to shore up where the federal government is cutting could see new lines of funding that allow them to continue on this grant-funded path for the foreseeable future. This will by definition be based on geographic location.
Some presses will seek to attract deep-pocketed donors who can single-handedly or with a small group support operations. This will be based on pre-existing connections and an ability to position a press in a public way that benefits the donor.
Some presses will explore new ways that technology and operational models can both lower their costs and expand their audience.
Some presses will explore communal ways of sharing basic operational costs, whether that’s by becoming part of a larger arts organization or by joining together as imprints within a larger collective.
And, just about everyone else that's not already self-sustaining will eventually cease operations.
Now I want to hear: What do you think the fallout of the NEA cancellations will be? Where am I hitting the nail on the head and where am I hitting my thumb?