Military Publishers

Over the past year, as I’ve stumbled my way through the publication of my first book, I’ve learned more about the military publishing world than I ever intended to. Much of it came through trial and error, awkward email exchanges, rejected proposals, and long conversations with people far more experienced than me. None of what follows is authoritative. It’s just the accumulation of lessons learned—some the easy way, some the hard way.

What you’re reading is less a formal guide and more a condensation of a dozen conversations over twice as many beers. I touch a lot of parts of the publishing ecosystem—agents, academic presses, micropresses, vanity presses, self-publishing, and everything in between. There are better, more detailed articles on each of these subjects individually. This is simply my attempt to put everything I’ve picked up over the past couple of years into one place so that when someone asks, “So how does military publishing actually work?” I can send them a single link instead of talking their ear off for an hour.

Military Books Have Unique Industry Norms. Military History is not just its own shelf in the bookstore; it has its own set of mid-tier traditional publishers, and its own rules. 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. My book, for example, is more of a “philosophy book written for a military audience,” which isn’t exactly a huge genre—it ends up on the Military History shelf. 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.  

Agents. Agents are people who will market your book to publishers for a percentage of the royalties, and are the first step to getting signed with a “big five” (e.g. Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, etc.). These monster publishers do not accept direct submissions—agents are the first filter. Unless you’re aiming for mass-market appeal, agents are not commonly a part of military publishing; I did not use one. Royalties from smaller publishers and print runs tend to be pretty low so there’s little incentive for agents to deal with them. On the other hand, if you’re a veteran hoping to cash in with a profitable memoir or leadership book, learning the agent ecosystem may be for you.

Don’t Write the Whole Book First. Unlike fiction publishers/agents, who will not even give you the time of day without a full manuscript, nonfiction publishers and agents do not want a full manuscript from you. Generally, they would prefer a thoroughly developed proposal with a couple of sample chapters just to prove you can write. This is so they can steer your project in a direction to make it more commercially viable (I stubbornly wrote the whole book first specifically to prevent such steering, and almost paid for it by not finding a publisher). This statement applies to nonfiction in general, military or otherwise. For some example templates of nonfiction book proposals, I recommend Jane Friedman’s site.

Publishing as Active Duty. Anyone active who’s published in professional media (e.g. Proceedings, War on the Rocks) knows that writing will net you just as many critics as supporters, possibly more. I call them ankle-biters to remind myself they don’t really matter. Jim Stavridis and H.R. McMaster are evidence that ankle-biters won’t necessarily hurt your career, but they may, and you should certainly not expect a literary reputation to help. No GO/FO wants a loudmouth or an attention-seeker on their staff, and unfortunately, some individuals will interpret any public writing as just that.

If it’s a book you’re publishing, expect the side-eye to be even more intense than for professional articles. That said, criticism is just a fact of life to be overcome. The vast majority of your colleagues will not think anything of your writing one way or another. If you have something constructive to say, then please do publish it, because our institutions need engaged brains and contributing to the profession is a fine tradeoff for a .01% reduction in chance to make flag (half of zero is still zero). Stay out of trouble by following the DOPSR process. 

Expect No Real Money. My book, which (at this infinitesimal moment) I can find in virtually any Barnes and Noble in the country, has netted me a few thousand bucks, with likely semiannual royalty checks in the hundreds of dollars for the next few years. I immediately turn around and send this to St. Jude’s, which brings more joy than taking flak from ankle-biters inclined to think I’m running a side-hustle on company time. I have a real job and it pays plenty.

Almost nobody makes a living from book royalties. Those “famous” nonfiction authors who get major billing in bookstores? Almost always, they are truly professional public speakers and self-publicists, wherein their books are just gears in their personal attention machines. Fame is the real asset while marketing is the real skillset for such professionals, with a target reading-level accordingly suppressed at the ninth grade. If that’s what you want to be, then by all means have at it, but be clear-eyed about what you want and with whom you are competing.

Decide Why You’re Writing, and Let That Drive the Approach. Is your aim to put forth an argument? Then an academic publisher or war college press might be for you. Will your project be profitable? That opens up mid-tier publishers. Might it be very profitable? An agent and a “big five” publishing house might be possible. Is it that you want to record your memoir for posterity or just prove that you can write a book? Self-publishing might be the way. Is your primary aim to bolster a CV for a government post or think tank job? Then a micropress might be better than self-publishing. More on all of these below.

Who, Then, are the Publishers?

This list is not comprehensive, but provides some clear examples of the different publishing paths out there, and captures some of my own experience in the process. Note that the following are purely anecdotal, candid observations—take this as a conversation over a beer, which may contain some element of misremembered BS. Please follow up with your own research.

• United States Naval Institute. A staple of the sea services, probably best known for their professional journals but also a prestigious publisher of Naval-interest books. I was absolutely certain they would want to publish my book and wrote it with that as Plan A; I was accordingly crushed when they declined on grounds it is “too far afield” of their regular program (in retrospect I cannot blame them in the least—it is an accurate characterization). The reality is they are struggling to survive in an era of declining interest in print media, and they really only have the capital to support a small number of book projects per year—they are very picky.

• Potomac Books. USNI recommended I pitch my book to these guys, given its academic styling. Potomac is an imprint of University of Kentucky Press, an academic publisher, who specialize in military history and military-adjacent topics (an Imprint is a subordinate business arm of a larger publisher which is separated for branding purposes—much like a music record label is for a larger record company). This is where I discovered the only industry more fiercely gatekept than commercial publishing is academic publishing. The first thing their submission form asked was where I got my PhD, and the Rickover School of Hard Knocks was not an acceptable answer.

• McFarland. They were the first to accept my book. They style themselves as an academic publisher; however, I became suspicious when they replied within 48 hours that they had read my book and liked it (LOL no you did not). Doing some digging, I came across rumor online that they will print almost anything. More tangibly, 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 do offer both 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. My publisher. A Pennsylvania-based military history publisher with an additional arm in the United Kingdom. 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, and they had no problem securing international brick-and-mortar distribution for it. They have a full-fledged marketing department with graphic artists and whatnot. They did not offer a peer-reviewed track like McFarland did. So far, they’ve been a delight to work with, and from what I read, it seems they are more personal and responsive than “big five” publishers.

• Self-Publishing. I began to look into this before McFarland called. Here’s what I know: It may be the only option. It may be the preferred option if you care about a timeline (traditional publishing is incredibly slow). With a serious self-marketing apparatus (read: an online following in the thousands with consistent effort), self-publishing can be more profitable to the author than traditional publishing—but don’t count on it. Prospects are worse than ever due to saturation by AI slop. Do hire a real editor—they will make your book better (I cringe at the peace of meat I sent out to beta readers—I’m truly sorry, folks), and if you’ve gone to the trouble of writing a whole book, you might as well go that extra inch to make it a better final product.

• Micropresses. A micropress is essentially someone who, for a percentage of the sales, will take some of the work of self-publishing off you and will allow you to put their label on your book. That’s the value proposition—essentially a stamp of approval. It might well be worth it. A good example is Dr. Jerry Hendrix’s To Provide and Maintain a Navy, published through Annapolis-based micropress Focsle LLP, and probably contributing to his current position as OMB’s shipbuilding czar. I was actually in negotiations with Focsle when Casemate called.

• Vanity Presses. Not to be confused with a micropress, a vanity press (pejorative industry term) makes its money selling services to authors rather than selling books. They come in many varieties (often billing themselves as hybrid publishers) that can be more or less predatory toward authors—the key distinguishing feature is that money flows from the author rather than toward. “Tells” to look for are a marketing effort designed to attract authors rather than readers, and a library of publications unlikely to turn a profit, like poetry books. Dead Reckoning Collective, which markets itself to veterans, smells like a vanity press to me, but when I emailed them to inquire if they follow a vanity press business model, 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.

• Religious Publishers. The religious book industry supports a coterie of mid-tier publishers that might be willing to publish a memoir or leadership book, particularly if your story has a religious flavor to it. An example is Scott Waddle’s memoir The Right Thing, published through Christian publisher Thomas Nelson.

• Overseas Publishers. In today’s hyperconnected world, one need not be limited to one’s own continent. Consider, for example, U.K.’s Pen and Sword and Helion publishers of military interest, or Canada’s Double Dagger.

• Others. Some other publishers of military interest include Blacksmith, Osprey, Stackpole Books, and Warriors Publishing Group. Casemate accepted before I got around to querying these guys, so I can’t really say much about them.

That’s All – For Now

If there’s one overarching lesson from the past year, it’s that military publishing is its own little world—small, idiosyncratic, and full of tradeoffs. There is no single “right” path. There is only the path that aligns with why you’re writing in the first place. Once you’re clear on that, the rest becomes a series of practical decisions rather than emotional ones.

Again, none of this is comprehensive, and none of it should substitute for your own research. Think of it as one officer’s snapshot of an opaque industry after a couple of years of fumbling through it. If it saves you a few missteps, a few unrealistic expectations, or a few awkward emails, then it’s done its job.