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Read the guidelines →Los Angeles publishes in the shadow of an industry that tells stories for a living and rarely tells them about the city accurately. The publishers that matter here are largely in the business of correcting that. Angel City Press has documented Los Angeles history, architecture and neighbourhoods since 1992 and is now part of the public library. Getty Publications produces art history to a standard few houses anywhere can match. TASCHEN runs its American operation from Hollywood. Around them sit a set of literary independents that publish the city’s writers on their own terms.
The count is seven, and it is honest. Los Angeles has a large number of companies that describe themselves as publishers and are in fact marketing agencies, book coaches or printers. The listings below are houses with an editorial operation, and one of them, Angel City Press, carries a status note because it changed hands in 2023 and most directories have not caught up.
For authors in Los Angeles and the surrounding area, Western Reflections offers something most of the houses on this page cannot: a direct read, a written response and a publisher who will say plainly when another California press is the better home for your book. We have published regional history, biography and memoir from Colorado since 1996 and work with authors nationally by email and phone.
Services are quoted individually and never as a package, you retain copyright and all files, and books stay in print. A quote costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Contact details are the ones each publisher lists itself. Anything we could not confirm is left out rather than guessed.
The definitive publisher of Los Angeles history, architecture and popular culture. Founded in Santa Monica in 1992 and gifted to the Los Angeles Public Library in 2023, where it now publishes as part of the library.
Status update: Acquired by the Los Angeles Public Library under a gift agreement approved in December 2023. Moved from Santa Monica and now publishes from the library as Angel City Press at Los Angeles Public Library.
The publishing arm of the J. Paul Getty Trust, producing art history, conservation science and exhibition catalogues to a standard of production few publishers can match.
The American arm of the German art book publisher, running its West Coast editorial and retail operation from Hollywood. Known for oversized photography and art editions.
The press that introduced French critical theory to an American readership through its Foreign Agents series, and later published Chris Kraus and the Native Agents line of first person writing.
An independent Los Angeles house publishing literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, with a deliberate lean toward writers and settings outside the United States.
A Los Angeles independent publishing literary fiction, music writing, crime and Southern California non-fiction, with a list that reflects the city it works in.
A non-profit literary press in Pasadena publishing poetry, fiction and non-fiction, with an active programme of prizes and a long commitment to writers in Los Angeles schools.
The year 1939 produced three novels about Los Angeles that between them still define how the city is written. Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep invented the version everyone knows. Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust wrote the version that was closer to true and ended with the city burning. John Fante’s Ask the Dust, set in Bunker Hill, was largely forgotten for forty years until Charles Bukowski found it in the Los Angeles Public Library and persuaded Black Sparrow Press to reissue it. Bukowski himself spent a working life writing the city from its east side and from the post office, and Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in the basement of UCLA’s Powell Library on typewriters rented at ten cents a half hour.
The city’s later writers pushed back against the version the film industry exported. Octavia Butler grew up in Pasadena and wrote science fiction that reads now like reportage. Wanda Coleman, who became the city’s poet laureate in all but book, spent a career making verse out of Watts and South Central. Walter Mosley set Easy Rawlins in the Black Los Angeles of the 1940s and 1950s that Chandler had left out. Luis J. Rodriguez wrote Always Running from the east side and later became the city’s official poet laureate. Joan Didion, from the other end of town, wrote Play It As It Lays and a body of essays that explained the place to itself with no particular kindness.
The literary infrastructure is substantial and spread across an enormous area. The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, held at USC each April since 1996, is the largest in the country. Vroman’s in Pasadena has been open since 1894 and is the oldest bookshop in Southern California. Beyond Baroque has run readings in Venice since 1968. The Los Angeles Review of Books was founded in 2011 as a deliberate west coast counterweight to New York criticism. And in 2023 the Los Angeles Public Library took the unusual step of acquiring Angel City Press outright, which is as clear a statement as a city can make that it intends to publish its own history.
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, held at USC each April since 1996, is the largest in the country and the Times Book Prizes are announced there; a Los Angeles author should plan a spring publication around it. Beyond Baroque in Venice has run readings and workshops since 1968. The UCLA Extension Writers’ Program is the largest continuing education writing programme in the United States and a realistic first step for a new writer. The Los Angeles Review of Books runs a publishing workshop each summer. PEN America’s Los Angeles office gives awards and runs programmes for emerging writers. The Huntington Library in San Marino and the Getty Research Institute hold the archives from which much of the city’s history is written.
The city is enormous and its bookshops are spread across it, which means a launch is a circuit rather than a single event. Vroman’s in Pasadena, open since 1894, hosts more author events than any shop in Southern California. Skylight in Los Feliz, Book Soup on Sunset, Diesel in Brentwood, Chevalier’s in Larchmont, Stories in Echo Park and the Last Bookstore downtown all run programmes. Angel City Press at the public library, Red Hen, the Unnamed Press and Rare Bird all read proposals or queries directly, and Red Hen’s prizes are among the more realistic first book routes for a Los Angeles poet. None of the city’s publishers requires a literary agent, which for a major city is unusual and worth using.
Every service is quoted on its own, so you buy the stages your manuscript actually needs rather than a package built around the ones it does not.
Developmental, line and copy editing, plus proofreading, quoted by manuscript length and condition.
Learn more →Original cover artwork and typography, supplied as layered source files you keep.
Learn more →Print ready interiors and reflowable ebook files built from one typeset source.
Learn more →Short runs, offset runs and print on demand, with paper and binding specified to the book.
Learn more →Launch planning, retailer metadata, review outreach and regional bookshop campaigns.
Learn more →Full manuscript writing from interviews, notes or a partial draft, published under your name.
Learn more →If your book is the city’s history or architecture, Angel City Press is the right target and now takes proposals through the library. If it is art, Getty or TASCHEN. We take the memoir, regional non-fiction and general history those houses do not.
Editing, cover, interior and marketing quoted individually, from a Colorado house, at a fraction of what the same work costs locally. You keep every file.
Vroman’s, Skylight, Book Soup, Diesel, Chevalier’s and the neighbourhood shops all host events. We list books on wholesale terms those buyers accept and help plan around the Festival of Books calendar.
An honest read of the manuscript, with a clear referral if an Angel City, Getty or literary independent is the better home.
A written plan of only what the book needs, priced by stage.
Structure first, then line and copy editing, then cover and interior. Illustrated projects get a print specification early.
Print on demand or a run, wholesale listings, and a launch plan built around the city’s bookshops and the April festival.
City directories go deeper on the local scene; the state page carries every publisher in California.
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