Radically Author-Centered Publishing
WHAT WE DO AND WHO WE ARE
What does Monday Editions publish?
We publish poetry chapbooks in limited editions of up to fifty copies, each one signed and numbered by the author.
What is the Monday Editions publishing model?
We think of ourselves as a gift-economy poetry micropublisher. After all, poetry is already a gift economy—almost no one makes money from poetry except
(more power to him).And so we embraced that reality from the outset. We don’t ask authors to pay for any part of the publishing process, we relinquish all financial interest in the books we publish, we leave marketing and distribution in the hands of authors, and we forgo all income from sales.
This arrangement keeps us from being mistaken for a vanity press, a hybrid press, a subscription-based press, or a self-publishing service. It also leaves us free to focus on making sure that each book bearing our imprint meets the editorial and design standards that define Monday Editions.
In short, our model gives authors the best of two worlds:
Benefits of traditional book publishing
An ISBN purchased by the publisher
Full coverage of editorial and production expenses
Rigorously professional editing, design, and production
Publication under a respected imprint
Advantages of self-publishing
Fast, streamlined publication
Retention of copyright and all other rights to the poems
Full control over the book’s price, marketing, sales, and distribution
100 percent of sales income
Our publishing program and our book budgets are entirely funded by paid Substack subscriptions. At this point, we expect to publish one book per quarter but would be happy to expand. The more paid subscriptions, the more books.
How do I submit my manuscript to Monday Editions?
You don’t. We’ll find you—and we’re looking. For the time being, though, submission and publication are by invitation.
OUR STAFF
X. P. Callahan, founder and publisher, is a poet, translator, and former editor at Random House, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin, the University of Washington Press, and Stanford University Press. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Calyx, and One Sentence Poems, among other journals. She has been writing the Diary Poems newsletter on Substack since 2022.
Waning Gibbous IV, executive editor, attended the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and completed the Columbia (formerly Radcliffe) Publishing Course. His late grandfather, Waning Gibbous Jr., is remembered as the author of two well-received collections, The Vicar’s Boneyard (1947) and O Lenticular Cloud of Sorrow (1958).