1Shambhala Publications
The leading Western publisher of Buddhist and contemplative literature, which moved from Boston to Boulder in 2015 and has become the anchor of Colorados publishing scene.
The 19 Best Book Publishing Companies in Colorado
Colorado does not look like a publishing state until you count. The Front Range holds one of the largest concentrations of religious publishing anywhere in the country, Boulder has been the American home of contemplative and Buddhist publishing since Shambhala moved there from Boston in 2015, and a scholarly press in Denver serves universities across three states. Add the regional houses working on western history and the outdoors and the total is a real industry, just one distributed along a hundred mile strip of highway rather than gathered into a single city.
The state also has a literary record that is easy to underestimate. Katharine Lee Bates wrote the lines that became America the Beautiful after riding up Pikes Peak in 1893. Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor from Colorado Springs. Mary Coyle Chase won the Pulitzer for Drama from Denver with Harvey. Neal Cassady grew up on Larimer Street, which is how a good part of On the Road came to be set here. Below are the publishers operating in the state now, with contact details taken from their own pages rather than from a listings aggregator.
19
Publishers listed
1996
Publishing since
Featured publisher
Western Reflections Publishing Company
Western Reflections Publishing Company has published from Colorado since 1996 and works with authors across Colorado on regional history, biography, memoir and general non-fiction. Nearly two hundred books are in print, most of them still selling years after publication, which is what a small house can do that a large one cannot.
Every submission is read by a person and answered in writing. Where we would not acquire a manuscript, editing, cover design, formatting, printing and marketing are quoted as fixed fees rather than bundled packages, and the author keeps copyright and every production file.
Contact
The listings
Book publishers working in Colorado
Listed with the contact details each house publishes itself. A detail we could not confirm is left out rather than guessed.
2Sounds True
A multimedia publisher of spiritual and psychological teaching, built originally on recorded audio programmes and now publishing books, courses and audio from Boulder County.
3University Press of Colorado
A non-profit scholarly publisher supported by a consortium of universities across Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, with strong lists in archaeology, anthropology and the environmental history of the mountain west.
4Fulcrum Publishing
An independent Colorado house publishing the American West, native studies, environmental writing and regional history, founded in 1984 and still independently run.
5David C Cook
A long established religious publisher producing church curriculum, Sunday school resources and trade Christian books. One of the larger publishing employers on the Front Range.
6WaterBrook and Multnomah
The Christian publishing division of Penguin Random House, operating out of Colorado Springs rather than New York. Publishes inspirational non-fiction, Christian living and fiction.
7NavPress
The publishing arm of The Navigators, publishing Christian discipleship books and the Message Bible paraphrase. Distribution moved to Tyndale in 2014, but editorial has stayed in Colorado Springs.
8Focus on the Family
A ministry with a substantial book and magazine publishing operation, best known for family and parenting books and the Adventures in Odyssey childrens audio series.
9Group Publishing
A northern Colorado publisher of church ministry resources, curriculum and vacation Bible school programmes, serving congregations rather than the retail trade.
10Roost Books
The lifestyle imprint of Shambhala Publications, publishing books on home, craft, food and mindful living. Shares an office and a submissions process with its parent.
11Blue Mountain Arts
A Boulder company publishing gift books, greeting cards and anthologies of poetry and inspirational prose. One of the few publishers in the state that reads unsolicited poetry as a matter of routine.
12Johnson Books
A Boulder imprint with a long backlist in western regional books, natural history, archaeology and outdoor guides. Now published under the Bower House group.
13Bower House
A Mountain West publisher of regional history, cookery, trail guides and literary fiction, founded in 2002. Now operating as an imprint of Globe Pequot rather than as an independent Denver house.
Status update: Now an imprint of Globe Pequot. The independent Denver operation, which also carried Johnson Books and Westcliffe, no longer trades on its own.
14Sentient Publications
A small Boulder independent publishing books on health, education, ecology and consciousness, with a list that reflects the towns long standing interest in those subjects.
15Colorado Mountain Club Press
The publishing arm of the Colorado Mountain Club, producing hiking guides, climbing manuals and mountain history for the state and the wider Rockies.
16Wolverine Farm Publishing
A Fort Collins non-profit publishing literary work with an environmental focus, run alongside a letterpress studio and a community space in the old town.
17Outskirts Press
A Colorado self publishing services company offering paid packages for design, production and distribution, with the author retaining full rights and royalties.
18Western Reflections Publishing Company
An independent Colorado house publishing western history, regional non-fiction and memoir since 1996, with nearly two hundred books in print and a catalogue built almost entirely on the mountain west.
19Paladin Press
A Boulder publisher of firearms, survival and military manuals that traded for forty seven years. Closed at the end of 2017 following the death of its co-founder, and no longer accepts orders or submissions.
Status update: Closed at the end of 2017 after forty seven years, following the death of co-founder Peder Lund.
Local context
Professional Book Publishers in Colorado
The state’s publishing history runs along two lines that rarely touch. One begins in Colorado Springs, where a cluster of religious publishers grew up around ministries headquartered in the city, and which now employs more people in book publishing than any other part of the state. The other begins in Boulder in 1974, when Chogyam Trungpa founded the Naropa Institute and Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman established the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics inside it. That school is still running, and it is the reason a contemplative publisher of Shambhala’s size found Boulder a natural place to land four decades later.
Denver has its own literary lineage, most of it written in the city rather than about it. Thomas Hornsby Ferril was Colorado’s poet laureate for a quarter of a century and worked from a house on Downing Street that still stands. Mary Coyle Chase was a Denver newspaper reporter when she wrote Harvey, which took the 1945 Pulitzer for Drama. Eugene Field edited the Denver Tribune long before anyone thought of him as a childrens poet. More recently the Lighthouse Writers Workshop has grown into one of the larger independent literary centres in the country, and the Tattered Cover has spent decades demonstrating what a serious independent bookshop does for a city’s writing.
The mountains carry a separate tradition again, one that Western Reflections has spent nearly thirty years publishing: mining camps, narrow gauge railroads, the San Juans, the people who stayed after the ore ran out. Kent Haruf wrote his Holt County novels out of the eastern plains, John Fante based the Colorado of his Bandini books on Boulder, and Stephen King checked into the Stanley Hotel at Estes Park in 1974 and left with The Shining. Colorado gives writers landscape and consequence in the same place, which is a rarer combination than it sounds.
Routes in
Getting Published in Colorado: Who Reads Directly, Prizes, and Where Books Launch
Most of Colorado’s general publishers read proposals directly, which is the first thing to understand about publishing here. Fulcrum, Shambhala, Sounds True, University Press of Colorado, Colorado Mountain Club Press and Western Reflections all accept submissions from authors without an agent, and Blue Mountain Arts reads unsolicited poetry as a matter of course. The religious houses in Colorado Springs are the exception and work through agents and writers conferences. For a regional non-fiction writer, that means the route to a real publisher in this state is a well built proposal and a sample, not a year of querying agents.
The state also has an unusually good set of programmes for developing a manuscript before it goes anywhere. The Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver runs year round classes, a June festival, and the Book Project, a year long programme in which a small group of writers finish a manuscript under the guidance of a published author. Naropa’s Summer Writing Program in Boulder has run every year since 1974. Aspen Words, part of the Aspen Institute, awards a thirty five thousand dollar literary prize for fiction and runs a summer conference. Colorado Humanities administers the Colorado Book Awards, given annually since 1991 across a dozen categories, and a shortlisting there is worth more to a regional title than most national reviews.
Books launch through a small number of shops that matter. The Tattered Cover in Denver, the Boulder Book Store on Pearl Street, Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Explore Booksellers in Aspen, Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins and Poor Richard’s in Colorado Springs are the venues that host events and stock regional work, and a title that has been through those shops has reached the readers who buy Colorado books. Beyond them, the museum shops, History Colorado, the visitor centres and the historical societies sell steadily to a tourist trade that arrives every summer wanting to read about where it is standing. The Denver Public Library’s Western History and Genealogy department is where the research for most of those books begins.
What we do
Book Publishing Services We Offer in Colorado
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.
Editing
Developmental, line and copy editing, plus proofreading, quoted by manuscript length and condition.
Learn more →Cover Design
Original cover artwork and typography, supplied as layered source files you keep.
Learn more →Formatting & Typesetting
Print ready interiors and reflowable ebook files built from one typeset source.
Learn more →Printing
Short runs, offset runs and print on demand, with paper and binding specified to the book.
Learn more →Marketing & Promotion
Launch planning, retailer metadata, review outreach and regional bookshop campaigns.
Learn more →Ghostwriting
Full manuscript writing from interviews, notes or a partial draft, published under your name.
Learn more →Why Colorado Authors Choose Western Reflections Publishing
We are a Colorado house, not a national one with a Colorado page
Western Reflections has published from the western slope since 1996. We know which archives hold what, which county historical societies will help, and which regional claims need a source before they go into print.
Western and regional subjects are the core of the list
Close to two hundred books in print on mining, railroads, the San Juans, ghost towns and Colorado biography. A manuscript on those subjects arrives at an editor who already knows the ground.
You keep your rights
Traditional contracts leave copyright with the author. On our fee based services you own every file we produce, including the print ready interior and the layered cover artwork.
Fixed fees, quoted before the work starts
Editing, cover design, formatting, printing and marketing are quoted individually. There are no packages that bundle things you did not ask for.
Our Book Publishing Process for Colorado Authors
Step 1
Read and assessment
Every Colorado submission is read by a person, not filtered by a form. You get a written response on fit, on what the manuscript is doing well and on what would need work.
Step 2
Plan and quote
We set out which services the book actually needs, what each costs and how long it takes. If a manuscript needs less than you expected, we say so.
Step 3
Edit, design and produce
Structural and line editing, cover design, interior typesetting and proofs. Regional books get a factual check against the sources, which matters more in local history than anywhere else.
Step 4
Print, distribute and launch
Print runs or print on demand, distribution through the wholesalers Colorado bookshops actually order from, and launch support with regional shops, museums and historical societies.
Questions authors ask
Frequently Asked Questions: Book Publishing in Colorado
What does it cost to publish a book in Colorado?
It depends entirely on which route you take. A traditional contract with a house like ours costs the author nothing, because the publisher carries the production cost and recovers it from sales. If you are publishing independently and buying services, a full length non-fiction book typically needs a structural edit, a copyedit, a cover and interior typesetting, and in Colorado those four together commonly land somewhere between three and eight thousand dollars depending on length and condition. Beware of anyone quoting a single package price without having read the manuscript, since they cannot know how much editing it needs.
Who owns the copyright once the book is published?
You do, in every arrangement worth signing. Copyright exists from the moment you write the words and a publishing contract licenses specific rights rather than transferring ownership. What varies is which rights you license, for how long, and in which territories and formats. Read the reversion clause carefully, since it governs when rights come back to you if the book goes out of print, and read the option clause, which can quietly tie up your next book.
Which formats should a Colorado regional book be published in?
Paperback first, almost always. Regional history and mountain west subjects sell through independent bookshops, museum shops, visitor centres and historical societies, and all of those want a physical book at a price a visitor will pay on impulse. An ebook is worth adding because it costs little once the interior is set. Hardcover is worth it for photographic and coffee table books. Audiobook is a genuine investment and usually makes sense only if the book has a narrative rather than a reference structure.
Is Colorado Springs really a publishing centre?
Yes, and it is the largest one in the state by employment. NavPress, David C Cook, WaterBrook and Focus on the Family all publish books from the city, and the cluster grew because several national ministries chose to headquarter there from the 1980s onward. It is a specialised centre rather than a general one, so it matters enormously if you are writing Christian non-fiction and hardly at all if you are not. Boulder, Denver and Louisville hold most of the state’s general trade publishing.
What genres do Colorado publishers actually take?
The state’s houses are specialists, which is the important thing to understand before submitting. Western and regional history, natural history, outdoor and guidebook publishing, Buddhist and contemplative writing, personal development, and Christian non-fiction are all well served here. Literary fiction and commercial genre fiction are not; there is no Colorado publisher acquiring those at scale, and writers in those categories are generally better served looking to agents and to houses elsewhere.
Do I need a literary agent to approach a Colorado publisher?
Mostly no, and that is one of the genuine advantages of publishing regionally. Fulcrum, Shambhala, Sounds True, University Press of Colorado and Western Reflections all take proposals directly from authors. The religious houses in Colorado Springs are the exception and generally want agented submissions. An agent is worth having if you are aiming at New York, and is largely unnecessary for a regional non-fiction book.
Find Publishers All Across Colorado
City directories go deeper on the local scene; the state page carries every publisher in Colorado.