A Sea Change for the Written Word
Tenacity Tale: “Two Wizards” Found Galiot Press to Tackle Unnecessary Tenacities
Our May Tenacity Tale is Galiot Press, a press launched on April 10, 2024 by Henriette Lazaridis and Anjali Mitter Duva with a mission to be “a sea change for the written word.”
Writers will always have to be tenacious in their commitment to their craft—the only way to shake off a bad writing day is to try again the next day, after all—but Galiot Press, a new book publisher co-founded by authors Henriette Lazaridis and Anjali Mitter Duva is committed to righting a few publishing wrongs that force writers to be unnecessarily tenacious in the marketplace.
So consider this month’s Tenacity Tale as something of an Anti-Tenacity Tale.
Oh, we’ll take a peek at how Galiot’s Kickstarter campaign to fund their fall 2025 books is forcing the press to be financially tenacious right out of the gate, but first we’ll look at all the top five ways Galiot will help writers be less tenacious in the market so they can continue to be tenacious little fiends in their work:
No more ghosting from agents—Look, Galiot Press gets that agents are drowning in queries. So many queries that to protect their time, many agencies have decided to only respond to submissions they’re interested in pursuing further and let their silence serve as a rejection. But while the no-response-means-no approach makes sense for agent workflow, it’s brutal for the writer who worked for years on a project only to elicit neither bang nor whimper, but crickets.
Enter Galiot’s query-by-appointment system.
Query slots are released weekly, with the number of slots determined by the number of queries that Galiot’s editorial team can realistically tackle in a given work week, but writers with a slot are guaranteed a timely—and definitive—answer.
How timely?
Writers with a query appointment submit a query letter and their first ten pages by Tuesday evening and get a response by Friday. If Galiot wants to see more, writers must submit their full manuscripts by the following Monday.No Gatekeeping for Un-agented Writers—Most U.S. publishers will only take submissions from agents, but Mitter Duva said “it can take a hundred rejections before you find an agent who will sign with you, and plenty of great authors with great books won’t find an agent at all.” Which is why Galiot Press will accept submissions from the agented and un-agented writers alike.
But although Galiot is open to giving a shot to books that have been overlooked by agents, Galiot’s wide net is cast with one clear condition: Galiot expects that un-agented authors will only query books that have been revised and polished with care.Leveling Gross Inequities—We’re living in a time when the same billionaire who paid millions to go to space for eleven minutes also racked up OSHA fines for unsafe working conditions in his factories, so it’s hardly shocking that there are similar disparities in the publishing world, yet there’s something categorically unfair about the wide range of advances awarded in publishing—books that earn a million-dollar advance aren’t a thousand times more worthy than books that earn a thousand-dollar advance, after all.
Galiot can’t change economic inequities in publishing at large, but it plans to lead by example. Writers signed by Galiot will all receive the same advance, the same marketing budget, the same coaching, and the same support, period.Royalties that feel more royal—Galiot writers won’t be able to quit their day jobs, but they will receive royalties that are three times the industry standard.
“When you buy a twenty dollar paperback, the author usually only gets one buck,” Mitter Duva said.
By working with a model that prioritizes digital publishing and leans on print-on-demand for tangible books, Galiot is keeping its overhead low so they can keep royalties high.You’ll Never Go Out of Print—With the exception of commercial writers whose success can support their entire back list, most writers with long careers have had the experience of the publisher letting one or more of its titles go out of print. Out-of-print books are still available in libraries (sometimes) and in second-hand shops but no new copies of the books are being printed.
Because the print-on-demand model only prints a book when readers demand it—OK, OK, it’s more like a polite request to put a book into a cart than a true demand, but give me my word play—Galiot can keep its entire backlist in print in perpetuity, which is basically immortality for a writer.
I’m kidding about that immortality bit, but only because I’m giddy to see Galiot finally come to life, and I’m not alone. Galiot has fans in publishing from critically acclaimed writers, such as Claire Messud and Gish Jen, to traditional publishers, such as Elisabeth Scharlatt, former editor and publisher at Algonquin Books.
“Two smart authors had a look at publishing and saw a way that they could do it better,” Scharlatt said in Galiot’s introductory video. “I think the future of book publishing is…indie start-ups that will create new ways to bring books and authors and ideas to the public, upsetting a model centuries in the making, and I think these two wizards will pull it off.”
To actually pull it off, though, Lazaridis and Mitter Duva must successfully launch Galiot on some frighteningly choppy financial seas.
Galiot is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to bankroll the $60,000 needed to publish their first three books in the fall of 2025, but that campaign is all-or-nothing—Galiot either hits its goal and receives the $60,000, or they miss it and get nothing.
With just twelve days until their May 17 deadline, Galiot is only forty-six percent funded. While Galiot’s Bookshop mood board indicates the press is a fan of suspense novels, the suspense surrounding the outcome of the Kickstarter campaign isn’t nearly as much fun as reading Tana French—if they don’t reach their goal, they’ll have to find another way to fund 2025 titles.
Either way, Galiot is going to change the publishing landscape with its inaugural titles in fall of 2025—this wouldn’t be much of a Tenacity Tale if Galiot was planning to pack it all in if its campaign falls short.
The question is whether they’ll do it with your help or without it.
So, take a look at the Galiot Kickstarter page, pledge if you’re able, and share this newsletter with every reader you know excited by the prospect of helping two wizards urge their literary baby to take its first steps.
Galiot at a Glance
TAGLINE: “A sea change for the written word.”
MISSION: “We have been involved in the publishing industry for many years, as writers and editors, working with everything from a Big Five press, to independent presses, to literary magazines. Our awareness of the frustrations both writers and readers face led us to embark on this project to start a press of our own. We had one vital principle in our approach: rather than replicate what presses are doing now, we looked outside publishing, to other industries, and found innovations and systems that make book publishing–and book buying and reading–better. Better for the writer, the reader, the environment, and for a press like ours that intends to publish work that transports, challenges, and delights the reader.”
NAME: Mitter Duva grew up in France. Lazaridis is a serious rower. Given that Galiot is the French word for a particular kind of sailing ship, Galiot seemed like le mot juste for a press that wants to be a sea change for the written word.
“We chose the name Galiot with great care,” Lazaridis said. “A galiot is a kind of vessel that uses both sails and oars. It’s nimble, adaptable to changing conditions. It holds people together and takes them on a journey.”
Tenacity Tales is HIBOU’s monthly celebration of the tiny tenacities in a writerly life. If you have a tenacity tale you’d like to share, comment below or send me your pitch at hibou@substack.com. To learn more about what we’re looking for, read the original Tenacity Tale here.
Subscribe to HIBOU for regular—and free!— content about writers on the hunt for the wise (and wisecracking) writing life!