Maryland Book Publishing Services for Authors With Credentials to Protect

Where Maryland writers find classes, readers and stages:

• Maryland Center for the Book. A program of Maryland Humanities and the state's Library of Congress Center for the Book affiliate. It brings two Maryland "Great Reads" to the National Book Festival, held August 22 in 2026.
• One Maryland One Book. A statewide book club with free events and an author tour each fall. The 2026 pick is No Sense in Wishing , Lawrence Burney's essays on Black music and Baltimore.
• The Writer's Center , Bethesda. Started in late 1976 by writers and small-press publishers, it runs hundreds of workshops a year in every genre and publishes Poet Lore , which it calls America's oldest poetry magazine.
• Enoch Pratt Free Library. Baltimore's library system lists Writers LIVE! author talks and "Writing @ the Pratt" programs such as the Writer's Club at the Herring Run branch, which meets on Monday evenings every other month.
• CityLit Festival , Baltimore. CityLit Project's spring festival; the next daylong event is April 17, 2027, with the Maryland Center for History and Culture.
• Gaithersburg Book Festival. A one-day festival at Bohrer Park, next held May 15, 2027.
• The Ivy Bookshop. An independent store at 5928 Falls Road in Baltimore that hosts author events.
• Maryland State Arts Council. Its Grants for Artists program pays $2,500 to independent artists, literary artists included, who are Maryland residents aged 18 or older and not enrolled in a degree program. The FY2026 round is closed.

Where we fit in: workshops sharpen the writing and festivals find the readers. The stretch in between, from final edit to a listed book, is the part we handle.

Book publishers in Maryland fall into the same three groups as anywhere else. A traditional press buys your book and controls it; a hybrid publisher asks you to share costs; a self-publishing service, which is what we are, charges for its work and leaves you as the publisher of record.

Two Baltimore presses are worth knowing. Apprentice House Press at Loyola University Maryland is run by students and reviews many genres, but not poetry, children's, self-help or previously self-published books; check its site for the next submission period. CityLit Press, begun in 2010, publishes chapbooks by its Harriss Poetry Prize winners and select literary and regional titles that larger houses may pass over.

Whoever you hire, ask three questions first: whose name is on the ISBN and the store accounts, who receives the royalties, and is the full price in writing. With us, the ISBN, the store accounts and the royalties are yours.

Edgar Allan Poe lived at 203 North Amity Street in Baltimore from about 1833 until 1835, when he left for Richmond to edit the Southern Literary Messenger . The house is a National Historic Landmark, run today by Poe Baltimore, and tours cover the short stories he wrote there. He shared the house with his aunt, Maria Clemm, and his cousin Virginia, to whom he later proposed by letter.