Connecticut Book Publishing Services for Authors With Something Worth Saying

Connecticut is compact, which makes its literary network easy to reach from any town. Start with these.

• Connecticut Center for the Book. Run by Connecticut Humanities as the state affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book. Its Book Voyagers directory lists Connecticut authors. Under its inclusion criteria, you must have lived in the state for three consecutive years or been born here, have a single-author book that libraries and stores can stock, and have a title in the Library of Congress catalog. Self-published books qualify if a professional journal such as Publishers Weekly or Library Journal has reviewed them.
• Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association (CAPA). Founded in 1994 for authors, publishers and publishing professionals, published or not. It holds monthly meetings on writing, publishing and marketing and runs a Premier Book Contest.
• Connecticut Book Festival , West Hartford. CAPA's own festival is held at the West Hartford Conference Center; check CAPA's site for the next date. Authors must be CAPA members, share an 8-foot table, and need a Sales and Use Tax ID number to register.
• R. J. Julia Booksellers , Madison. At 768 Boston Post Road, it has hosted author events since 1990, more than three hundred a year, and makes a point of supporting local and independent authors.
• Connecticut Office of the Arts. Its Artist Fellowship is open to full-time residents 18 and older in any discipline, with awards of $1,000 to $5,000. It will not be offered in the July 2026 to June 2027 cycle, so watch for the next announcement.

Where we fit in: the directory, the festival table and the bookstore shelf all assume a professionally finished book. That part is our job.

There are three routes. A traditional press acquires your rights and pays royalties if it accepts the book; a self-publishing service charges for the work and leaves every right with you; a hybrid sits between them and needs a careful contract review.

Connecticut's best-known book publishers are university presses. Yale University Press in New Haven welcomes proposals and manuscripts through the editor for your field. Wesleyan University Press in Middletown is currently taking proposals only on dance and music, and its general poetry submissions reopen in February 2027.

If you go the service route, get three answers in writing first: who holds the ISBN and store accounts, who is paid the royalties, and what the full quote includes.

Samuel Clemens lived with his family in a 25-room Victorian house in Hartford from 1874 to 1891, and it was there that he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Today The Mark Twain House at 351 Farmington Avenue is open to visitors seven days a week.