Publishing as a Creative Act and Why Crossroads Opens Today

About this episode

This episode discusses the evolution of publishing and the emergence of small presses in the current literary landscape.

In 1917, Virginia and Leonard Woolf set up Hogarth Press in their dining room with about forty pounds of operating capital. Five years later, Sylvia Beach published Ulysses from a Paris bookshop after every major publisher refused it. A few months after that, Hogarth Press published The Waste Land — another book the corporate houses had passed on. In a span of five years, two small presses founded by writers and bookshop owners redefined what English-language literature could do in the twentieth century. The publishing moment we are living through in 2026 looks remarkably like that one. The big houses have closed their doors to the writer of serious nonfiction without an existing platform. Agents have become the new editorial gatekeepers. The book that takes seven years to write is structurally homeless in the corporate system. This episode argues for what comes next — a return to the editorial tradition that produced the literary canon. Crossroads Publishing Group is a boutique press in that tradition. Two lanes: Leadership (Covey/Lencioni/Collins) and Reflective (Solnit/Whyte/Hollis/Tooze/Klein). Hybrid model, legitimately operated. IBPA-pledged. CLMP member. The Founding Voice…

People in this episode

Host: Chad Prevost

Topics covered

• publishing
• literature
• nonfiction
• editorial tradition
• small presses
• writing

Keywords

• publishing
• Hogarth Press
• Crossroads Publishing Group
• literary canon
• nonfiction
• small presses
• editorial tradition
• Virginia Woolf
• Sylvia Beach

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Hogarth Press, Crossroads Publishing Group

Books & works: Ulysses, The Waste Land

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