Small Presses Are Quietly Changing Everything

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Maya Bairey is the founder of Lingua Ink Media, a hybrid press for underrepresented authors. After publishing her own novel, she unexpectedly fell in love with the process. With 30 years of experience in corporate digital marketing, she found the skills transferred, and the mission inspired her. Today, she helps other writers bring their stories to life through real publishing and real partnership.

Traditional publishing makes a lot of writers feel like they’re doing it wrong.

Maybe you wrote a novel in your fifties, or kept poems in a drawer for twenty years. You’d like to be seen, to have your words read. And now, you’re hearing that unless you have an MFA, a huge social following, or a story that fits neatly into what’s selling this season, there’s no place for your work.

“It started to feel like no one wanted my story. I started to doubt myself. Was it just… bad? Or was it me? Too old? Too queer? Too unknown?”
–Miranda Fischer, Lingua Ink author

That’s a lie. There are other ways. Some of us are building them.

Small presses, especially the independent ones, are changing the rules. We’re creating space for authors the big houses ignore: older writers, queer writers, first-time writers. People with real stories to tell, not market trends to chase.

And we’re doing it with intention. Not as a second choice, but as a first principle.

Here’s how it looks in practice:

We don’t ask for credentials.
We don’t expect you to already have a platform.
We don’t believe you have to write a “bestseller,” just a good book.
And we don’t think anyone should have to go it alone just because their story doesn’t fit the industry’s mold.

You might have already experienced the silence: the ignored queries, the polite rejections, the endless advice to “build your brand” before anyone will take your writing seriously.

But traditional publishing isn’t the only path! You can get published, and marketed, and have someone in your corner who knows how.

“Something wild happened: people read it. They reached out. They told me they’d never read a book like it before. One even said, ‘I didn’t know anyone else had ever felt this way.’”
–Miranda Fischer, Lingua Ink author

This is why small presses exist: to widen the gate, to see the value in your book, to change what “success” even means.

If you’ve been waiting for a sign that it’s time to find a new way forward, maybe this is it.

More: What is Hybrid Publishing?