2025 was another stellar year for independent publishers; another year when their books stormed onto the longlists and shortlists of practically all the UK's top literary prizes, and claimed the winners' crown of many.
These achievements are especially impressive in fiction, where the small teams and minuscule budgets of indie presses are up against mighty multinational behemoths like Penguin and Hachette.
In 2025, novels published by independent publishers won the Betty Trask Award (for Ashani Lewis's Winter Animals), Goldsmiths Prize (for C D Rose's We Live Here Now), Hawthornden Prize (for Manya Wilkinson's Lublin), and Jhalak Prize (for N S Nuseibeh's Namesake) – plus a slew of smaller awards.
Five of the novels on the 2025 Booker shortlist were published by indies: Ledia Xhoga's Misinterpretation and Jonathan Buckley's One Boat by Daunt Books and Fitzcarraldo Editions respectively; and Natasha Brown's Universality, Claire Adam's Love Forms and Benjamin Markovits' The Rest of Our Lives by Faber & Faber.
Four of the novels on the Women's Prize shortlist – Karen Jennings' Crooked Seeds, Jenni Daiches' Somewhere Else, Miranda July's All Fours, and Saraid de Silva's Amma – were published by indies Holland House, Scotland Street Press, Canongate and Weatherglass Press.
If you've noticed that the majority of these winning novels were written by women, you'd be right. In a year where there have been complaints that men are dominating the literary shortlists once more, the indies are still flying the flag for women writers.
In poetry the indies' successes are more predictable – because the vast majority of poetry collections are published by independent publishers in the first place, with only Chatto, Penguin Poetry, Picado, Simon & Schuster and Weidenfeld & Nicholson snuggled into the protective armpit of a multinational mammoth.
In 2025 six of the ten collections on the T S Eliot shortlist were published by indies – the winner is yet to be announced. In 2024 the total was seven out of ten. It was a similar picture for the Forward, the other top prize for poetry in the UK. Three of the five shortlisted collection were published by indies in both 2024 and 2025.
So what's the secret? What are all these agile Davids doing to triumph over so many muscular Goliaths?
Actually it's a trio of secrets. First, the indies are risk-takers, who are prepared to follow their hearts and invest in a book they believe in – regardless of publishing trends. Their editors don't have to justify their decisions to a fierce marketing department, who want guarantees that a book will sell.
Second, because they're not on a gruelling production treadmill, the indies are able to spend time working with their authors on their manuscripts, lovingly crafting the covers, and gathering admiring puffs from established authors.
Finally, they enter their books for every prize and award going. This is where being published by an indie can really pay off for an author. If you're with a conglomerate with a big list of publications, your book's less likely to be selected for their quota of prize entries. If you're on an indie's much smaller list, your chances of being put forward are much greater.
The good news is that you don't need to get an agent in order to submit your work to the vast majority of indie presses. In keeping with the indies' hands-on approach, you will be dealing directly with your potential editor from the start.
And this is where Mslexia can help. The 5th Edition of our Indie Press Guide is a completely up-to-date list of over 750 independent book and magazine publishers, over 150 of which are completely new entries since the 4th Edition.
And on 23-24 February we have invited editors from 12 independent presses to take part in our Indie Extravaganza event – where you can pitch your novel, or your collection of poetry or short stories, to some of the most influential people in the indie press world.
They include Eloise Milar of Galley Beggar Press (whose authors have won the Goldsmiths Prize, Desmond Elliott Prize, and achieved multiple prestigious shortlistings including the Booker and the Women's Prize for Fiction), Amy Acre of Bad Betty Press (Forward Prize, Laurel Prize and many more), and Emma Dai'an Wright of the Emma Press (whose authors have won the Michael Marks Award, PBS Pamphlet Choice Award and the Edge Hill Debut Prize).
The Author
