1University of Texas Press
The scholarly press of the University of Texas at Austin, with a list that has genuine international standing in Latin American studies, Middle Eastern studies, film and Texas history.
The 12 Best Book Publishing Companies in Texas
Texas publishes more seriously than its reputation suggests, and it does so through institutions rather than through trade houses. The state has no equivalent of a New York conglomerate. What it has instead is a network of university presses with genuine international standing, a Dallas non-profit that has become one of the most important publishers of translated literature in the country, and the oldest and largest publisher of Hispanic literature in the United States, operating out of the University of Houston.
That institutional shape has a practical consequence for writers. Most of the significant publishers in Texas accept proposals directly, without an agent, because scholarly and non-profit presses evaluate work through peer review and editorial judgement rather than through a sales forecast. For a Texas author with a serious non-fiction subject, the door is considerably more open here than it would be in New York.
12
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 Texas 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 Texas
Listed with the contact details each house publishes itself. A detail we could not confirm is left out rather than guessed.
2Texas A&M University Press
A scholarly press with unusual strength in natural history, military history, agriculture, nautical archaeology and the environmental history of the Southwest.
3Deep Vellum Publishing
A Dallas non-profit that has become one of the most significant publishers of literature in translation in the United States, and which also runs a bookshop in Deep Ellum.
4Arte Público Press
The oldest and largest publisher of Hispanic literature in the United States, based at the University of Houston, and the home of the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage project.
5Trinity University Press
A San Antonio scholarly press with an unusually strong list in place based writing, nature and the built environment, publishing well beyond its own faculty.
6TCU Press
The scholarly press of Texas Christian University, focused on Texas and the Southwest, with lists in regional history, literature and womens history.
7Texas Tech University Press
A scholarly press on the South Plains with lists in costume and textile history, Vietnam war studies, natural history and the literature of the American West.
8University of North Texas Press
A Denton scholarly press with strong Texas folklore, true crime and military history lists, and annual prizes in poetry and short fiction that are open to anyone.
9Greenleaf Book Group
An Austin hybrid publisher working mainly with business and thought leadership authors. The author funds production and keeps the rights and a high royalty share, and Greenleaf supplies distribution into the trade.
10Scribe Media
An Austin author services company that turns interviews and outlines into finished books for business and thought leadership clients. Collapsed in 2023 and was rebuilt under new ownership, so due diligence matters here.
Status update: Shut down in May 2023 with mass layoffs, then acquired and relaunched by Enduring Ventures later the same year.
11Brown Books Publishing Group
A Dallas company offering paid publishing services under what it calls a relationship publishing model, where the author funds the project and keeps ownership of the finished book.
12Cinco Puntos Press
A family run El Paso house that published border literature and bilingual childrens books for thirty five years. Its list was acquired by Lee & Low Books in 2021 and now continues as an imprint from New York.
Status update: Acquired by Lee & Low Books in June 2021. The El Paso operation wound down; the imprint continues from New York.
Local context
Professional Book Publishers in Texas
The state’s literature was assembled deliberately, and largely at the University of Texas. J. Frank Dobie spent a career collecting the folklore of the border country and the brush and arguing, against considerable resistance, that it was worth writing down. Américo Paredes then complicated Dobie’s Texas entirely with With His Pistol in His Hand, a study of the corrido of Gregorio Cortez that showed the same events looked completely different from the Mexican side of the river. That argument, about who gets to narrate the border, runs through Texas writing to this day and is the reason Arte Público Press in Houston matters as much as it does.
The state’s best known novelists worked at the edges of it. Larry McMurtry wrote out of Archer City and spent much of his career dismantling the mythology of the cattle drive that Lonesome Dove then accidentally reinforced. Cormac McCarthy moved to El Paso and wrote Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy from there, producing the most uncompromising prose the state has hosted. Katherine Anne Porter, born in Indian Creek, took the Pulitzer in 1966. Sandra Cisneros spent decades in San Antonio, and Naomi Shihab Nye still writes from there.
The infrastructure that supports all this is unusually good. The Texas Book Festival, founded in Austin in 1995, raises money for public libraries across the state and has grown into one of the larger literary festivals in the country. The Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas fully funds every student it admits, which almost no writing programme does. Texas Monthly has been publishing long form non-fiction to a standard most national magazines gave up on. Deep Vellum in Dallas took on the backlist of Dalkey Archive Press and made the city a genuine centre for literature in translation, which is not a sentence anyone would have written twenty years ago.
Routes in
Getting Published in Texas: Who Reads Directly, Prizes, and Where Books Launch
Texas is the easiest large state in which to reach a real publisher without an agent, because its significant houses are scholarly and non-profit and evaluate work through peer review rather than sales forecasts. University of Texas Press, Texas A&M, TCU, Texas Tech, University of North Texas Press, Trinity, Arte Público and Deep Vellum all take proposals or queries directly. The University of North Texas Press runs the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry and the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, both open to anyone and both publishing the winning manuscript. The hybrid companies in Austin and Dallas have no acquisition gate at all, which is a different kind of openness and should be understood as one.
The Texas Institute of Letters, founded at the Centennial in Dallas in 1936, gives annual awards across a dozen categories and its membership is the state’s literary establishment. With the University of Texas it runs the Dobie Paisano Fellowship, a residency at J. Frank Dobie’s former ranch outside Austin. The Michener Center funds every student it admits for three years. The Writers’ League of Texas, based in Austin, runs an agents and editors conference each June that is the most practical route to a New York agent from inside the state, along with manuscript contests and book awards. Inprint in Houston runs a reading series and fellowships, Gemini Ink serves San Antonio, and the Writer’s Garret has served Dallas since 1994. The Texas Book Festival each autumn and the San Antonio Book Festival each spring are the two large public stages.
Books launch at a short list of shops. BookPeople in Austin is the largest independent in the state and hosts events most nights. Brazos Bookstore and Blue Willow in Houston, Interabang and The Wild Detectives in Dallas, The Twig in San Antonio and Literarity in El Paso hold the other cities. Those buyers order through Ingram and expect trade terms and returns. Beyond them, the state’s museum shops, the Bullock Texas State History Museum, the historical commission sites and the university bookshops sell regional titles to a large and loyal readership that wants to read about Texas, which is a market a Texas author should take seriously.
What we do
Book Publishing Services We Offer in Texas
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 Texas Authors Choose Western Reflections Publishing
Direct submission, no agent required
Like most of the Texas presses, we read what authors send us. You will get a considered response rather than silence, including an honest view on whether a university press would serve the book better.
Regional non-fiction is what we actually do
Local and state history, biography, memoir tied to place and the working landscape. These are the categories where a specialist publisher genuinely outperforms a general one.
Fixed fee services, rights stay with you
Every service is quoted individually and you keep copyright and the production files. We do not take a perpetual royalty share in exchange for doing production work.
Distribution that works for regional books
Listings configured for the wholesalers that Texas independent bookshops, museum shops and historical societies order from, with trade terms a buyer will accept.
Our Book Publishing Process for Texas Authors
Step 1
Submission and read
Send a proposal or the full manuscript. We read it properly and tell you what is working, what is not and whether we are the right publisher for it.
Step 2
Plan and fixed quote
A written scope covering only what the book needs, each stage priced separately, with a realistic schedule.
Step 3
Edit, design, typeset
Developmental editing first, then line and copy work, then cover and interior. Historical and regional books get their sources checked before anything goes to layout.
Step 4
Print, distribute, launch
Print on demand or a run, wholesale and library listings, and launch support aimed at regional bookshops, festivals and local media.
Questions authors ask
Frequently Asked Questions: Book Publishing in Texas
Do Texas publishers accept submissions without an agent?
Most of the significant ones do, which is genuinely unusual. University of Texas Press, Texas A and M, TCU Press, Texas Tech, University of North Texas Press, Trinity University Press, Arte Público and Deep Vellum all take proposals directly from authors. The University of North Texas Press runs annual prizes in poetry and short fiction that anyone may enter. For non-fiction in particular, a Texas writer has a realistic route to a serious publisher without ever querying an agent.
What does publishing cost, and what should I be suspicious of?
A university press or a non-profit will not charge you to publish; they carry the cost and pay a royalty, though advances are small or absent. Hybrid and services companies in Austin and Dallas do charge, and those are legitimate businesses provided the transaction is clear. The warning sign is a company that presents a fee as an offer of publication. Ask what happens to your files and your money if the company stops trading, because Texas authors saw exactly that scenario when Scribe Media collapsed in 2023 mid project on a great many books.
What rights does a university press take?
Typically world rights across all formats, which sounds broad but is usually appropriate, because a scholarly press sells into international library and course markets that an author could not reach alone. Royalties are calculated on net receipts rather than list price, which produces a smaller number than trade authors expect, and advances are rare. Copyright remains yours. The real value being exchanged is permanence and peer credibility rather than money.
Which formats suit a Texas regional book?
Paperback carries most regional history and cultural writing, because the buyers are bookshops, museum shops and visitor centres pricing for a general reader. Scholarly presses often issue a hardcover for libraries first and a paperback later. Illustrated books on Texas landscape, ranching or architecture justify a hardcover. Audio is worth considering for narrative history and memoir, and is generally wasted on reference structured books.
Is Austin or Dallas the better place to publish in Texas?
They do different things. Austin holds the University of Texas Press, the Michener Center, the Texas Book Festival and the concentration of hybrid and author services companies serving the business and technology community. Dallas has Deep Vellum, which has made the city a national centre for literature in translation, plus Brown Books and a strong independent bookselling scene. Houston has Arte Público. If your book is scholarly or about Texas, Austin and College Station. If it is translated literary fiction, Dallas. If it is Latino literature, Houston.
What genres are actually publishable in Texas?
Non-fiction of almost every kind: state and regional history, natural history, borderlands studies, military history, folklore, true crime, music and food writing. Latino and bilingual literature through Arte Público. Literature in translation through Deep Vellum. Business and thought leadership through the Austin hybrid houses. What Texas does not have is a publisher acquiring commercial fiction at scale, so novelists writing thrillers or romance should be querying agents rather than looking for a Texas house.
Find Publishers All Across Texas
City directories go deeper on the local scene; the state page carries every publisher in Texas.