The 8 Best Book Publishing Companies in San Francisco

Professional Book Publishers in San Francisco, California

The city’s literature started in its newsrooms. Mark Twain, Bret Harte and Ambrose Bierce all worked San Francisco papers in the 1860s and 1870s, and Twain’s Jumping Frog was written here for a New York weekly. Frank Norris set McTeague on Polk Street in 1899. Jack London was born on Third Street in 1876. Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon in an apartment on Post Street and set it in the streets around it, so precisely that the alley where Miles Archer is shot now carries a plaque. San Francisco has always been a city that writes about itself at street level.

The Six Gallery reading on 7 October 1955 was the pivot. Allen Ginsberg read Howl aloud for the first time to a small crowd on Fillmore Street, Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote to him the next day offering to publish it, and City Lights did. Customs seized the printed copies in 1957, Ferlinghetti was arrested, and Judge Clayton Horn’s acquittal set a precedent that made publishable a great deal of what American literature did next. The shop is now an official city landmark and still a publisher. Kenneth Rexroth, who had hosted that reading, had already spent a decade making the city a centre for poetry that took the Pacific rather than Europe as its reference point.

The modern city kept the habit of doing things its own way. Armistead Maupin serialised Tales of the City in the Chronicle from 1976, Chronicle Books itself grew out of the newspaper into a publisher that other publishers study for design, and Dave Eggers built McSweeney’s and the 826 Valencia writing centre within a few doors of each other. Litquake has run a citywide festival every October since 2002, and Zyzzyva has published West Coast writers since 1985. It is not a city with a large publishing industry. It is a city with an unusually specific one.

Getting Published in San Francisco: Who Reads Directly, Prizes, and Where Books Launch

Litquake, every October since 2002, is the city’s literary festival and its Lit Crawl fills the Mission with readings on a single night; for a new author it is the most efficient introduction to the Bay Area scene. The Writers Grotto on Second Street is a shared workspace and community of working writers that has been central to San Francisco publishing for two decades. 826 Valencia, the youth writing centre Dave Eggers founded beside McSweeney’s, and Zyzzyva, publishing West Coast writers since 1985, are both institutions. The Commonwealth Club gives the California Book Awards each spring and the Northern California Book Awards follow.

The city’s bookshops are the launch circuit and they order through wholesalers on trade terms. City Lights on Columbus Avenue still hosts readings under the same roof as the press. Green Apple on Clement Street and its Ninth Avenue shop, the Booksmith on Haight Street, Dog Eared in the Mission and Alley Cat further along Valencia all run events. Omnivore Books on Cesar Chavez sells only food and cookery titles, which for a Chronicle style illustrated book is the most targeted launch venue in the country. Chronicle, City Lights, McSweeney’s and No Starch all read directly, as do the Oakland houses across the bay, so a San Francisco author with the right subject has an acquiring editor within reach without an agent.