Books we've published for authors like you
As featured & trusted
Here is the strange, wonderful fact about Iowa: no state on the map has trained more of America’s writers, and almost no state gives a first-time author fewer publishers to send a manuscript to. The University of Iowa founded the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1936 — the first creative writing degree program in the country — and in 2008 UNESCO named Iowa City a City of Literature, the first in the United States and only the third in the world, after Edinburgh and Melbourne. Flannery O’Connor and John Irving studied there. Kurt Vonnegut taught there while working on Slaughterhouse-Five. Marilynne Robinson taught there for a quarter century and set her Pulitzer-winning Gilead in a small fictional Iowa town. And yet: search “book publishers in Iowa” and you’ll find directory listicles padded with literary agencies and printing shops, because the acquiring trade publishers mostly aren’t here. This page is the honest version — what Iowa’s real presses publish, what the Workshop is and isn’t, and how USA Publishing House publishes Iowa authors remotely from our one office in Norcross, Georgia, with every price public before you ever pick up the phone.
Start with the school itself, because everything in Iowa letters radiates out from it. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop has been running in Iowa City since 1936, and the roll call reads like a syllabus of American literature: Flannery O’Connor wrote the stories that became her first novel while a student there; John Irving and Sandra Cisneros came through as students; Kurt Vonnegut, John Cheever, and Philip Roth all taught there. Marilynne Robinson taught at the Workshop for about twenty-five years and won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Gilead, a novel written as a dying preacher’s letter from the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa. Paul Harding, a Workshop graduate, won the 2010 Pulitzer for Tinkers — a novel famously rejected across New York and published by a tiny press, which ought to comfort anyone holding a rejection letter. W.P. Kinsella drafted Shoeless Joe out of his Iowa years — the novel became Field of Dreams, and the ballfield built for the movie still stands in Dyersville, drawing visitors every summer. Jane Smiley set her 1992 Pulitzer winner A Thousand Acres — King Lear on a thousand Iowa acres — while teaching at Iowa State in Ames. And Des Moines raised Bill Bryson, who turned his 1950s childhood there into The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Since 1967, the university’s International Writing Program, founded by Paul Engle and Hualing Nieh Engle, has brought writers from more than 150 countries to spend a fall semester writing beside the Iowa River. When UNESCO made Iowa City a City of Literature, it wasn’t flattery; it was arithmetic.
The scene is not locked inside the university, and that matters for you. Every June and July the Iowa Summer Writing Festival opens workshops in Iowa City to any adult who signs up — no application, no portfolio, no degree — and it has been doing so since 1987; thousands of first-time memoirists and novelists have taken their opening chapters there. Prairie Lights, the bookstore that anchors downtown Iowa City, has hosted one of the country’s great author reading series since 1978, and Beaverdale Books plays the same neighborly role in Des Moines. The Iowa City Book Festival fills the town with readers each October. If you are writing in Cedar Rapids or Council Bluffs tonight, the distance to a serious literary community is a tank of gas, not a plane ticket.
Now the publishers, honestly counted — because here is where Iowa’s paradox bites. The University of Iowa Press in Iowa City is a real acquiring publisher with a national reputation, and its Iowa Short Fiction Award has launched story collections for over half a century; but it is a scholarly and literary press with a selective list, not a home for most first-time memoirs, novels, or children’s books. Ice Cube Press in North Liberty has published Midwestern and prairie-minded books since 1991 — a genuine independent, and a small one, acquiring a handful of titles a year. And the Workshop itself, for all its Pulitzers, publishes nothing: it is a school, not a press, a distinction every high-pressure sales call conveniently forgets when it name-drops Iowa City at you. The plain truth is that most Iowa authors — like most authors everywhere — will publish through Amazon and the national retail chain, not through a hometown imprint. The only question is who does the professional work of getting the book there. That is the assisted model USA Publishing House runs: for one flat package we do everything a publishing house does — editing, cover design, interior formatting, ISBN registration, and distribution to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and 20+ other platforms — usually inside 60 days from finished manuscript to live listing, while 100% of the rights and royalties stay with you. More than 1,200 authors have published with us since 2017.
USA Publishing House has a single office: 6010 Singleton Rd, STE 213-109, Norcross, Georgia. There is no “Des Moines branch,” no Iowa City suite trading on the Workshop’s zip code, no East Village address that turns out to be a rented mailbox. We would rather tell you that in the first paragraph than let you discover it later, because companies that invent local offices are usually inventing other things too. For Iowa authors the working relationship is phone, email, and shipping: your manuscript travels by email; printed proofs and author copies arrive at your door in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Sioux City, Iowa City, Waterloo, Ames, West Des Moines, Ankeny, Council Bluffs, Dubuque, or Cedar Falls; and the finished book lists on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com like any publisher’s book. One clock note, said plainly: Iowa runs on Central time, one hour behind our Georgia office, so our 11am–8pm Eastern phone window is 10am–7pm your time — a full Iowa business day with the evening left over.
Whatever you’re writing, one team carries it end to end: complete book publishing, memoirs and life stories — the farm-and-family books Iowa produces like no other state — children’s books with custom illustrations, and faith-centered publishing for authors writing from belief. If you’re weighing the do-it-yourself route first, today’s companion guide to self-publishing costs prices every line of that path honestly. When you’re ready for figures, the line-by-line cost breakdown and the full price list are public, our plain-English guide to how to publish a book walks every path, and a free consultation puts your exact figure in writing. Authors across the region get the same straight talk on our Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Missouri publishing pages.
Describe the manuscript, even roughly. A real consultant calls you back with the honest options and an exact written figure — never a script.
No — and you deserve to read that here rather than discover it later. Our single office sits in Norcross, Georgia. Every Iowa author works with us by phone and email, with proofs and author copies shipping to any address from Sioux City to Davenport. Iowa is on Central time, so our 11am–8pm Eastern phone window is 10am–7pm on your clock — call (229) 518-4453 any workday and a real person picks up.
No — the Workshop is a graduate school, not a publisher, and it acquires nothing. It admits a small class of MFA students each year; that’s a wonderful path if you want two years of study, but it is not a route to getting an existing manuscript into print. If you want the Iowa classroom experience without an application, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival has run open-enrollment workshops in Iowa City every summer since 1987 — any adult can register. Neither one, though, replaces the actual production work of editing, design, and distribution that turns a manuscript into a book on Amazon.
If your book fits their lists, sincerely try. The University of Iowa Press publishes scholarly, literary, and regional work — its Iowa Short Fiction Award has launched debut story collections for over fifty years — and Ice Cube Press in North Liberty has published Midwestern and prairie-themed books since 1991. Both are legitimate and both acquire selectively, a handful of titles a year, for their own niches. A first-time memoir, a mainstream novel, or a picture book outside those lists usually isn’t what they exist to publish — assisted publishing exists for exactly the books that fall outside every institutional door.
No reader has ever checked a publisher’s zip code. A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer as an Iowa farm story published from New York; Gilead is as Iowa as a book can be and needed no Des Moines imprint to get there. What your book needs is a clean edit, a cover that signals its genre from a thumbnail, and distribution readers can actually reach — Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the same online shelves where Iowa readers already buy. We’ve published family histories, farm memoirs, and faith-centered books for authors nationwide, and every one lists beside the big houses’ titles.
The same thing it costs everywhere, because zip codes don’t change the labor: a single payment between $699 and $7,999 (50% off this month) that covers editing, cover design, formatting, ISBN and distribution. The number never grows after you commit — that’s the whole point. Compare the packages on the pricing page, check the arithmetic in the cost breakdown, and get your figure in writing before any payment.