ENC PRESS
THE INTELLIGENT ALTERNATIVE

100% FICTION: NO PULP

ENC (Emperor’s New Clothes) Press was founded in 2003 by Olga Gardner Galvin, a New York–based freelance writer and book editor, and the Californian writer Beth Elliott, with the express purpose of publishing original, unusual novels that most mainstream publishing behemoths turn down on the grounds of their questionable appeal “to the broadest possible audience” (“the broadest possible audience” being whatever an acquisitions editor who hasn’t left Manhattan in thirty years thinks it is).

ENC Press is the intelligent alternative to fiction publishers who target the broadest possible audience. We are a small but completely independent boutique press fascinated by unusual, unpredictable fiction — sharp, well-plotted, entertaining, and driven by engaging characters. If it happens to contain elements of social and political satire or commentary, so much the better. We welcome and promote genre-busting books and authors whose views may be unpopular with some of the mainstream public.

ENC Press is the intelligent alternative to the crassness of mainstream distribution. Good books are treasures, not “merchandise.” Even if they don’t become bestsellers in the few weeks that mainstream publishers and booksellers routinely allow their print titles to prove themselves or be relegated to the compost heap, we intend to stand by our books and our authors for as long as it takes. While we provide PDF e-versions of our titles as a courtesy to our readers, we still believe that a book is much more than just “content,” and publish all our titles as original trade paperbacks first.

ENC Press is the intelligent alternative to the publishing formulas used to produce ever more dumbed-down fare in the age of reality TV. We use 21st-century, cutting-edge production technology to not only set new standards of design and craftsmanship for print books produced by small presses, but to evoke the best of the Golden Age of publishing, when publishers and editors nurtured new authors and shaped and refined books hands-on, more interested in the story than in its short-term profit potential.

ENC Press is the intelligent alternative to publishing serfdom for writers. We keep our overhead low to make decent royalties a reality for our authors — and to be able to publish books worth publishing even if they aren’t potential blockbusters. We do not cavalierly promise to place our books in the front of brick-and-mortar stores, nor do we pay mainstream online booksellers a king’s ransom to add our titles to their vast databases, but, through innovative marketing and active participation of charismatic authors, we hope to bring our books to the attention of the audiences that are most likely to be interested in each particular title.

ENC Press is the intelligent alternative to the predictable pabulum that dominates the mainstream book scene. Despite the opinion that “fiction doesn’t sell,” which informs most mainstream bookkeeping decisions, we are still committed to publishing only novels — the kind that offer enough substance, arguments, and ideas to provide guilt-free amusement for the steadily growing audience of independent thinkers who hunger for more food for thought than they can find in chain bookstores and online megastores.