Radically Author-Centered Publishing
WHAT WE DO AND WHO WE ARE
What does Monday Editions publish?
We publish chapbooks of poetry and essays in limited editions of up to fifty copies, each copy signed and numbered by the author. In some cases, if demand for a title exceeds the availability of the limited edition, we will publish a second, open edition (unnumbered and unsigned).
What is the Monday Editions publishing model?
We think of ourselves as a gift-economy micropublisher.
We don’t ask the author to pay for any part of a book’s editorial, design, production, or printing processes. We cover all costs from obtaining the book’s ISBN to shipping printed and bound books to the author.
We relinquish all financial interest in the books we publish.
We leave marketing, distribution, and all sales revenue in the hands of the author.
This arrangement prevents 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 ensuring 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, production, and printing 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 book’s written content
Full control over the book’s 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. The author of A Party of Another Kind,
Black Shirt Emblazoned, and Mortal Sugar: Poems in the Key of Lotería, 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).
