Belt Publishing 2022 Year in Review

Phew!

Phew. With the release of the Cincinnati Neighborhood Guidebook last week, Belt Publishing published its final book of 2022. And what a way it was to end the year: look at this crowd at the launch party at the gorgeous Mercantile Library!

Indulge me, if you would, in a retrospective. Our first title of the year was Phil Christman’s How To Be Normal, which was excerpted in Harper’s, raved about in The TLS (“Phil Christman is one of the best essayists in America,” says the equally brilliant Becca Rothfield), The New Republic (“Christman’s analysis bristles with incisive and well-earned insight,” says the equally incisive Chris Lehmann), the Wall Street Journal and a few other well-heeled publication. How To Be Normal is the second book Phil has published with Belt, and I’m ridiculously proud to say he’s now working on his third for us. Follow along with Phil over at

The Tourist

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With Craig Calcaterra’s Rethinking Fandom we published our first sports book, something I’d been trying to do for years and years (we had two books under contract that then fell apart), and it was an absolute delight to work on this book from start to finish with the menschy, bold, prolific, astute Calcaterra. The highlight for me might have been the lunch we had outside Columbus after we signed the contract, but the book garnered plenty of press highlights as well, selling briskly, in no small part due to the thousands of fervent fans of Craig’s

Cup of Coffee by Craig Calcaterra

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Jennifer Niellsen’s Dreadful Sorry—”consistently charming” according to the LARB—is perhaps our first “true” essay collection, and the experience was so positive that we now have a few more coming in 2023 and beyond; I’ll be excited to share details with you all soon. We published two other titles in Belt’s city anthology series, City of Hustle: The Sioux Falls Anthology, which we cannot seem to print enough of to keep ahead of demand, and A Lovely Place, A Fighting Place, a Charmer: The Baltimore Anthology. And we were so proud to help Edward Curtis bring Arab Indianapolis to its extremely receptive and appreciative audience.

Another first: a novel. Aaron Foley’s Boys Come First —his third book with Belt—was pure joy to publish. The Wall Street Journal loved it, as did PW, and lots of other places, and it was chosen to be part of the Lit16. But mainly it has been the delighted responses of readers that have been the best reward: so many hilarious insta posts and Tik Toks, so many reading groups thrilled to have Aaron join them.

Aaron and Belt will have some incredible news to share about Boys soon—we’ve been waiting for months to share it!—so follow Aaron wherever you find him to be the first to hear the details.

One aspect of publishing that surprised me, and might surprise you, is how nervous we can be about a book’s publication, not because we want it to sell well and get raves (we do), but because we want the author to be happy with the release. So seeing Erin Keane’s happiness with the reception to her brilliant Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me, has been so so welcome. NPR named it a best book of 2022, and New York magazine ran a fascinating interview, amongst other laurels. “"Memoirs this smart and absorbing don’t come around all the time,” wrote Michael Schaub. He’s right.

But wait! We also published a tarot deck, the second such project by Belt’s brilliant designer, David Wilson. We’ve already blown past our sales projections for the Great Lakes Tarot (and we are running quite low on them—both of them, actually—so if you want to give it as a gift, better act fast. We can’t print more before the end of the year).

For those of you counting, that’s nine new books and a tarot deck—plus some paperback editions of previously published hardcovers. In 2021 we published 14 new titles, so in some respects it’s been a calmer year for me. It was a very intentional decision to reduce the number of new titles—but it’s like turning a cruise ship, to shift down the number of titles—so it took a few years for this decision to become apparent to anyone other than the staff. We will stick with this number, and plan to publish nine new books again in 2023: you can see some of them here.

I’ll end with an appeal to the 4,000 of you who read this newsletter: spend some time on the Belt store and pick out a few books to buy for yourself, or for gifts. We have some great bundles, and almost everything is on sale right now. Our press only works if we bring in x amount of dollars every month through direct sales. The vast majority of people will buy our books at indie bookstores or Amazon, or borrow them from the library—and that’s as it should be! But we must peel off a percentage who are willing to purchase directly from us to keep the staff paid and the lights on. So, on behalf of the Belt staff—Meredith, Phoebe, Mike, Bill, David, and me—as well as all the authors—we’d be thrilled if you would put a few things in your cart, and then use BELT15 at checkout and the price will drop yet another 15%. Thanks!

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Notes from a Small Press is the newsletter by Anne Trubek, the founder and owner of Belt Publishing.  Subscribe to receive every post. Oh and don’t forget to grab a copy of  So You Want to Publish a Book?, the book based on this newsletter that other people say good things about.