William C. Spears

Military Publishers

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William C. Spears
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In the interest of making this new blog as useful as possible to the likely audience, I’ll start by sharing some of what I’ve learned about publishing over the last year—specifically as might be encouraging to other military authors.

First: There are tons of resources, tips, and communities available online for aspiring authors, and you’ve got a lot of homework to do if you haven’t yet availed yourself of them. I particularly recommend Reddit’s r/PubTips. That said, these are overwhelmingly geared toward fiction publishing, which works differently than nonfiction.

For instance, unlike fiction publishers or agents, nonfiction publishers/agents do not want a complete manuscript from you. They would prefer a thoroughly developed proposal with a couple of sample chapters just to prove that you can write. This is so they can steer your project in a direction to make it more commercially viable. This statement applies to nonfiction in general, military or otherwise. Jane Friedman puts out some informative stuff for nonfiction authors as well as some decent proposal templates.

Second: Military History is not just its own shelf in the bookstore; it is its own mini-industry within the publishing world, with its own set of mid-tier traditional publishers, and its own rules and norms. Works of general “military interest” or written by a “military author” do not constitute a separate genre, and are instead often lumped into military history by publishers and distributors. For example, my book is more of a “philosophy book written by a military author,” which isn’t exactly a huge genre. Considering the reluctance of traditional publishers to take risks on anything they can’t immediately categorize, I’m very lucky to have found a publisher at all.  

Many military history books are printed in small volume, and there are numerous small amateur historians writing them. Consider the phenomenon—now a meme—where men who turn 40 must suddenly either get really into smoking meats or really into WWII history. Many of this latter group take up writing, hence the industry is full of first-time authors.

Unless you’re Ian Toll and publishing with a “big five,” I don’t think agents are commonly a part of military history publishing; I did not use one. Royalties from smaller publishers and print runs tend to be pretty low so I don’t see much incentive for them.

Third: The only industry more fiercely gatekept than commercial publishing is academic publishing. If you’re hoping to write an “academic” -style book, you’d better have a PhD if you expect academic publishers to give you the time of day. The first thing most of them ask is which university you’re affiliated with and where you got your doctorate, and the Rickover School of Hard Knocks is generally not an acceptable answer. There are some options available for academic-style writing that don’t expect a PhD, and I’ll get to those below.  

Finally: This list is not comprehensive, but here are some of the military-interest publishers I’ve discovered, with some notes where applicable:

  • McFarland: They were the first to accept my book. They style themselves as an academic publisher; however, I’ve read online somewhere that they will print almost anything. It is their business model to do very small print runs and sell to libraries; consequently, their books are generally all priced very high. They offered either a peer-reviewed or non-peer-reviewed track. They are the place to go if you’re writing very niche academic works, like a history of the first all-Hispanic artillery regiment of Maine or something. I did not want my book to price out potential readership, so when they refused to budge on the pricing model, I declined their offer.
  • Casemate Publishers: The publisher I ultimately went with, they have offices in the U.S. and U.K. They publish beautiful military history books, with a handful of titles in military-adjacent topics like mine. Like McFarland, they also do a lot of small print runs with high pricing, but I did not have a hard time convincing them to price my book below $20. They did not offer me a peer-reviewed track like McFarland did. They have a full-fledged marketing department with graphic artists and whatnot. So far, they’ve been a delight to work with, and I’ll update my experience as the process goes on.
  • Potomac Books: An imprint of University of Kentucky Press, an academic publisher, they specialize in military history and military-adjacent topics.
  • United States Naval Institute: Annapolis-based publisher of Naval interest, with a lot of history and prestige behind their brand, which they guard closely. They only publish a few titles each year, and can be very picky
  • Focsle LLP: An Annapolis-based micropress. Good people. They’ve only published a handful of works but would be a good alternative to USNI for people interested in publishing books of specifically naval interest.
  • Dead Reckoning Collective. Oriented to specifically publish military and veteran authors, they smell like a vanity press to me (a key tell is being focused on attracting authors rather than readers). When I emailed to directly ask if they are indeed a vanity, they did not respond.
  • War College Presses e.g. Naval War College Press, Air University Press, NDU Press, etc. These are oriented toward publishing the work of faculty and students, but they will publish outside works. They will lend scholarly gravitas if you’re looking for that, but will not pay anything and do not have the same distribution of a more traditional publisher. These may be a good option if your primary aim is to build a CV for future work in academia or a think tank.

That’s all for this first post! Welcome to my new blog, and I hope you’ve found it helpful.

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