With his name on one half of the latest Wizard’s Tower Books duo, Andrew Knighton talks about his experience working with an iconic small press on a dual-author release.
From the outside, the publishing process can look like a mystery. Manuscripts go in and books come out, but everything else is magic. I can’t unpick the whole messy business, but when the BFS asked if I’d like to write about the launch of my latest book, I figured it would be a good opportunity to lift the lid on small press publishing, and in particular Wizard’s Tower’s distinctive Wiz Duos line.
The Small Press Experience
The key to understanding small presses is in the “small”. These are tiny teams or individuals, usually publishing around their day jobs, and for them books are a passion. They believe deeply in what they’re publishing but don’t have a lot of resources. They’ll spend as much time on your book as they can manage, but life easily gets in the way.
The most visible symptom of this is publicity. The press will do what they can via social media and in-person events, but they don’t have a big publisher’s clout or the money for paid advertising. Your own efforts are a large proportion of what shifts the books—as is increasingly the case for publishing in every form.
Working with a small team makes for a personal experience. No anonymous editors or weird meetings with marketing people. I’ve sold books to strangers in the streets of Leeds alongside my cover designer. I’ve sat up late in bars setting the world to rights with the person who pays my royalties. I’ve seen the connections groups of writers forge when they’re thrown together in a tight publishing schedule. There’s a feeling of solidarity.
But what does the actual publishing process look like?
The Wizard’s Tower Experience
My experience with Wizard’s Tower Press shows how good it can be when that process works well, and the advantages small presses have.
I submitted my novella, Walking a Wounded Land, to Wizard’s Tower in early June this year (2025), and I got an enthusiastic acceptance from editor Joanne Hall near the end of July. Anyone with experience of publishing will tell you that less than two months is a fast response—I’ve had agents and editors take a year or more. This was particularly impressive because of how Wizard’s Tower publish novellas. Every story has to find a fitting partner by another author, thematically linked stories to be published together. In the space of eight weeks, two editors and a publisher had all read a heap of submissions and not only picked mine out but found another it would go with.
Cheryl Morgan, the mastermind behind Wizard’s Tower, wanted to get the book out for World Fantasycon at the end of October. Again, folks with publishing experience can tell you how fast that is: production normally takes years, not months. This is another advantage of small presses—when there’s a deadline, you can move fast.
Once the contract was signed, Jo’s fellow editor Roz Clarke provided suggestions for revisions, all of which were good. She picked up on things I hadn’t noticed about the story, things that could be better. Knowing we were on a tight schedule, I did my revisions within days, and the manuscript was approved.
As often happens at small presses, people were filling multiple roles, so Roz also designed the cover. I’d heard her and Jo talk about designing the cover for Fight Like a Girl 2, so I knew I was in good hands. The image she came up with caught the mood of Walking a Wounded Land while fitting the aesthetic of the Wiz Duos series. I queried one small detail, and everything was quickly decided.
While the front cover was in progress, we were also working on the summary for the back cover and sales copy. Trying to get across the essence of a story in a way that intrigues readers is challenging. You have to simplify so much it can stop feeling like your story, even when you’re the one writing that summary. But again, everything went smoothly, and the cover soon had summaries for both my story and its companion, The Sheltering Flame by Ruthanna Emryss.
At the same time, we contacted some authors to ask if they’d be willing to provide blurbs, the nice quotes that help recommend a book to readers. Being part of the BFS helped, as I could ask people I knew within the community. Because the time frames were so tight, we didn’t get any quotes in time for the initial print run, but I was blessed with people who enjoyed the story and provided lovely quotes to share on social media.
The Wiz Duos Experience
No story exists in isolation, and that’s especially true when you’re sharing a cover. As part of checking the manuscript, I got to read Ruthanna’s story.
Seeing what your novella goes with is a unique part of the Wiz Duos experience. I loved reading The Sheltering Flame for its own sake, and have been enthusing about it to people ever since, but what I particularly enjoyed was the resonances, the way the two stories’ themes of landscape and personal connection came together.
I appreciated things in my own story more for seeing how these two sat side by side, and that’s all down to Jo and Roz’s work as editors.
The Launch Experience
Then came launch day.
Technically, copies of the book had been in the world since Bristol Con the previous weekend, but the main event was on the Saturday of World Fantasycon in Brighton over Halloween weekend. Being launched alongside books by Juliet E. McKenna and Chaz Brenchley worked well for us, as we got exposure to a bigger audience. There was cake and wine, people said nice things about our stories, books were sold and signed. It was thrilling to see that what I’d written caught people’s interest.
I also had a reading slot at nine o’clock that night, so decided to read from the beginning of Walking a Wounded Land. It was the first time I’d read from this story in public, and I wasn’t sure how well it would go.
(Pictured: Andrew and Ruthanna at the launch)
Things got off to a promising start, as Amal El-Mohtar was in the same time slot and attracted more people than fellow reader Charlotte Goodwin or I would have done—plus I wanted to hear Amal’s reading, so the timing was perfect.
But then the problems started. First, the room was locked. Then, when we got in, we found out that there was a wedding disco next door. I ended up reading serious passages about landscape and grief while Michael Jackson and the Village People sounded through the wall, raising my voice every time the DJ turned up the volume. In spite of everything, people said they enjoyed my reading, and I’m reliably told that some of them bought the book the next day, so it can’t have been as bad as it seemed at the time.
So far, I’ve seen very positive responses to Walking a Wounded Land. I’m sure some people will hate it—no interesting story can be for everyone—but hopefully it’ll mostly end up in the right hands, and that’s all down to Wizard’s Tower.
Wiz Duos 3 is out now, and available direct from the publisher here.
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