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Arizona has a stranger, richer book history than people expect. Zane Grey wrote the Westerns that made the Mogollon Rim famous from a cabin near Payson. Stephenie Meyer drafted Twilight as a stay-at-home mom in the Phoenix Valley — Bella leaves Phoenix on page one. Diana Gabaldon grew up in Flagstaff, taught at Arizona State for years, and still writes the Outlander books from Scottsdale. Every March, the Tucson Festival of Books takes over the University of Arizona campus as one of the largest book festivals in the country. Yet type “book publishers in Arizona” into Google and you get directory lists that never answer the only question that matters to a first-time author: which of these will actually take my book? Here's the straight version — what Arizona's presses publish, what they don't, and how USA Publishing House publishes Arizona authors remotely from our one office in Norcross, Georgia, with every price published before you ever pick up the phone.
Start under the Mogollon Rim, because that's where Arizona's book legend begins. Zane Grey, the best-selling Western novelist of his era, kept a hunting cabin near Payson in the 1920s and set novel after novel in the Rim Country below it; the original cabin burned in the 1990 Dude Fire, and Payson rebuilt a faithful replica that now welcomes visitors beside the Rim Country Museum. Tucson's literary bench runs deeper still. Barbara Kingsolver spent formative decades there — The Bean Trees lands its heroine in Tucson — and Edward Abbey, patron saint of desert writing, taught at the University of Arizona and lived out his last years nearby. Leslie Marmon Silko, whose Ceremony is one of the landmark American novels of the last half-century, has long made Tucson home, and Ofelia Zepeda — Tohono O'odham poet and University of Arizona professor — won a MacArthur Fellowship for work rooted in this exact ground. Alberto Ríos, born on the border in Nogales, became Arizona's first state poet laureate in 2013 and has spent decades as a Regents Professor at Arizona State. And the commercial end of the shelf is just as Arizonan: Stephenie Meyer was a Phoenix-area mom with no publishing credits when Twilight sold, and Diana Gabaldon was an Arizona State professor when she wrote Outlander — two of the biggest author careers of the modern era, launched from the Valley with no local publisher involved at all.
The infrastructure is real, too — and, as everywhere, each piece of it wants something specific. The University of Arizona Press, publishing since 1959, has one of the country's most respected lists in Indigenous studies, borderlands history, and space science — and it acquires scholarship through formal proposals, not memoirs from first-timers. Poisoned Pen Press, the Scottsdale mystery house founded in 1997 and now an imprint of Sourcebooks, takes crime fiction — through the standard agented channels — and shares a name with Scottsdale's famous Poisoned Pen Bookstore, where the genre's bestsellers stop on every tour. The teaching layer is enviable: the University of Arizona's creative writing MFA sits beside its Poetry Center, a poetry archive and event space founded in 1960 that poets travel across the country to read at; Arizona State runs its MFA alongside the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and its Desert Nights, Rising Stars writers conference; Northern Arizona University holds down Flagstaff. Tempe's Changing Hands, an independent bookstore going since 1974, anchors the Valley's reading life, and the Tucson Festival of Books — founded in 2009 — now draws crowds that put it among the biggest literary events in America. What Arizona does not have is a large trade house that acquires general-interest books from unagented authors. Neither does almost any state; that's the industry, not a desert problem.
Read that landscape the way a first-time author has to, and the pattern is familiar: scholarship by proposal, genre fiction through agents, poetry through programs and prizes. Almost none of it is a door that opens for the retired teacher in Mesa with a life story her kids keep asking her to write down, the pastor in Glendale with a year of sermons that want to become a devotional, or the grandmother in Sun City with a children's book and no interest in learning cover-design software. That's the gap we work in. USA Publishing House is an assisted publisher: you pay one flat package price for the work a publishing house does — editing, cover design, interior formatting, ISBN, and distribution to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and 20+ other platforms — and the finished book is yours, with 100% of the rights and royalties staying in your name. Since 2017 we've published more than 1,200 authors across the country, including plenty who tried the narrow doors first and decided their book shouldn't wait any longer.
Our address is 6010 Singleton Rd, STE 213-109, Norcross, Georgia, and it's our only one. No Phoenix suite, no Scottsdale mailbox, no “Tucson branch” that's really a rented address — if a publisher would fake something as checkable as an office, imagine what else it would fake. Working with us from Arizona is phone, email, and shipping, and the only quirk worth naming is the clock: Arizona famously skips daylight saving time, so our 11am–8pm Eastern phone hours land at 8am–5pm Arizona time for most of the year and 9am–6pm in winter — either way, a full Arizona workday. Everything physical ships: printed proofs and author copies arrive at your door in Chandler, Flagstaff, or Yuma just the same, and your book lists on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com exactly the way any publisher's book does.
Whatever the book is, one team carries it: complete book publishing, memoirs and life stories — a big deal in a state so many people retire to with a life's worth of material — children's books with custom illustrations, and Christian publishing. If you'd rather read before you talk, start with our plain-English guide to how to publish a book, the line-by-line cost breakdown, and the full price list — then book a free consultation when you're ready. Neighbors get the same straight talk on our California, Texas, and Georgia publishing pages.
A real consultant — not an autoresponder — will call you back with your options and your exact price.
No — and we'll keep saying so, because plenty of outfits in this business won't. Our one office is in Norcross, Georgia. Arizona authors work with us by phone and email; since Arizona skips daylight saving, our 11am–8pm Eastern hours are 8am–5pm your time most of the year (9am–6pm in winter), and proofs and author copies ship to any Arizona address. Call (229) 518-4453 and a real person answers.
If your book truly fits — Indigenous studies, borderlands history, or space science for the University of Arizona Press, agented crime fiction for Poisoned Pen — submitting costs nothing but time, and we'd never talk you out of trying. Be honest about fit, though: most first books, especially memoirs, family histories, devotionals, and children's books, sit outside both lists. Assisted publishing exists for exactly those books, and for authors who'd rather publish this year than wait on acquisition calendars.
Not even slightly, and we'd be out of business in Arizona if it were — people move here precisely at the stage of life when the memoir, the family history, or the children's book for the grandkids finally gets written. There's no age question anywhere in the process: you approve an edit, a cover, and a printed proof, and the book goes live. Many of the 1,200+ authors we've published wrote their first book in retirement. Our memoir publishing page is the right place to start.
Your book will be listed on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, and 20+ retail platforms, and any bookstore — Changing Hands in Tempe, the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, a shop in Prescott — can order it through standard wholesale channels. What nobody can honestly sell you is guaranteed shelf space; stores choose their own stock. A publisher promising “bookstore placement” is waving a red flag, not offering a service.
The same as authors in every state: one payment between $699 and $7,999, currently 50% off this month, covering editing, cover design, formatting, ISBN, and distribution. No surcharges, no “quote calls,” no number that grows week by week. Every package is on our pricing page, and your exact figure goes in writing before you pay a dollar.