Submersible Press sprung up out of a desire to publish full length books of experimental writing apart from my efforts at C22 Press which focuses mainly on chapbooks. Originally it was going to be a solo publishing project but I soon realised that the workload would be too much for me and so I contacted my frequent collaborator Joshua Martin who I’ve worked closely with for years, both in C22 as well as other projects. He was keen to join and so we went to work on Submersible Press together.
From the outset we wanted Submersible Press to be a strictly non-commercial venture with our authors receiving 100% of royalties. We wanted to do this in order to avoid the many potential pitfalls of the commodification of art. And frankly there is so little money to be made publishing such starkly experimental work that it’s not worth stressing over. We prefer to be free (as much as possible) of commercial considerations. We make no money but by using a free website and print on demand it is easy to run a press at almost no personal cost. All we really spend is time, which we gladly give.
The books are available both in print (via print on demand) and freely as pdfs, the reason being that with such work it can be hard to find an audience and free pdfs reach more people than just print. I’ve found that a book will reach a much wider audience when released this way. In fact the amount of people who will download a book versus how many will purchase one is not even close, often the ratio is 100 to 1. I prefer print personally, but if we want these books to be read then pdf is the answer.
Our first book, Denominators Hive by Michael S. Judge, came out in May and at almost 800 pages of dense experimental prose it was a remarkable book to work on, and a great pleasure to bring into the world. Our second book, Game 6 by Jim Meirose has just been released and it too was a pleasure to work on. We wanted to keep the output of the press small so we will only be publishing three books a year for the time being. We find our books strictly through soliciting and don’t have open submissions. This is because with such a small output we would be turning away far more work than we would ever publish and we have plenty coming out as it is. We’ve already got enough in the pipeline to take us into 2027 so plenty to look forward to.
Apart from the goal of putting out these great books I also hope that Submersible Press can act as an example for people who want to publish works that may not be commercially viable. I want people to see that it can be done without a great deal of money and without being overly taxing on your time. More presses putting out interesting books is always a good thing.
Nathan Anderson is a poet and artist from Mongarlowe, Australia. He is the author of numerous books and has had work appear widely both online and in print. He is a member of the C22 experimental writing collective and the co-founding editor of Submersible Press. You can find him at nathanandersonwriting.home.blog or on Bluesky @njapoetry.bsky.social
