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American publishing was born in Pennsylvania — Benjamin Franklin was setting type in Philadelphia three centuries ago, and for the young republic's first decades Philadelphia was the country's printing capital. The state is still thick with presses: four serious university publishers, a famous Philadelphia indie or two, and the house that built an empire out of Emmaus. What almost none of them are set up for is a first-time author with a finished manuscript and no agent. This page lays out which Pennsylvania publishers are worth your query letter, what each one actually takes, and how USA Publishing House works with Pennsylvania authors remotely from our one office in Norcross, Georgia — at prices printed before you ever pick up the phone.
The history is not a footnote here; it's the founding story. Benjamin Franklin ran his Philadelphia print shop from the late 1720s, published the Pennsylvania Gazette, and launched Poor Richard's Almanack in 1732 — and for decades afterward Philadelphia, not New York, was where American books got made. J.B. Lippincott hung out his shingle there in 1836, and Lippincott's medical list is still published from Philadelphia today. In the early twentieth century, Curtis Publishing mailed the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies' Home Journal out of a building on Independence Square to millions of American homes. The writers kept coming, too. Edgar Allan Poe did some of his best work during his Philadelphia years, 1838 to 1844 — “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Gold-Bug” among them — and his house on Seventh Street is now a National Historic Site. Pearl S. Buck wrote from a Bucks County farmhouse in Perkasie, won the Pulitzer for The Good Earth in 1932 and the Nobel in 1938, and her home is a National Historic Landmark. James Michener, raised in Doylestown, took the 1948 Pulitzer for Tales of the South Pacific; the art museum in his hometown carries his name. John Updike, born in Reading and raised in Shillington, turned that corner of Berks County into the fictional Brewer of the Rabbit novels and won two Pulitzers doing it, and John O'Hara did the same for Pottsville as “Gibbsville.” Out west, Pittsburgh holds its own shelf: August Wilson set nine of his ten Pittsburgh Cycle plays in the Hill District where he was born and won Pulitzers for Fences and The Piano Lesson; Annie Dillard's An American Childhood is a Pittsburgh book to its bones; David McCullough grew up there before winning two Pulitzers of his own; and Rachel Carson, whose Silent Spring changed American law, was born just up the Allegheny in Springdale in 1907. Since 2004, City of Asylum on Pittsburgh's North Side has housed exiled writers from around the world. The training pipeline runs deep as well — the University of Pittsburgh, Temple, Penn State, and Carnegie Mellon all run serious writing programs, Penn's Kelly Writers House anchors the Philadelphia scene, Bucknell's Stadler Center has nurtured poets for decades, and Chatham University, Carson's alma mater, runs an MFA in her shadow.
The publishers working in Pennsylvania right now are just as real — and just as specific about what they take. The University of Pennsylvania Press, founded in 1890, the University of Pittsburgh Press with its storied Pitt Poetry Series, Penn State University Press, and Temple University Press all acquire mostly scholarly and literary work through formal review. Quirk Books in Philadelphia — the house behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies — runs a small, deliberately quirky trade list. Running Press, a Philadelphia fixture since 1972, is now an imprint of Hachette and acquires largely through agents. Rodale of Emmaus built one of the country's biggest health-and-gardening lists before its book division was folded into Penguin Random House in 2018. Schiffer, out in Atglen, publishes deep niches for collectors and craftspeople, and Autumn House Press in Pittsburgh takes poetry and prose mainly through contests and submission windows. Every one of these is a legitimate press. And almost none of them is a realistic door for the schoolteacher in Lancaster with a finished memoir, the pastor in Erie with a devotional, or the nurse in Scranton with a children's book in a drawer. Search “book publishers in Pennsylvania” and you get a wall of impressive names that open a few times a year, usually for someone with an agent, a platform, or a faculty post.
That gap is where USA Publishing House works. We are an assisted publisher: you pay once 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 book comes out under your name with 100% of the rights and royalties staying yours. Since 2017 we have published more than 1,200 authors across the country, including plenty who queried the presses above first, waited out the reply windows, and decided their book shouldn't wait any longer.
We would rather say it now than have you discover it later: our only office is at 6010 Singleton Rd, STE 213-109, Norcross, Georgia. We do not have a Rittenhouse Square suite, a Pittsburgh branch, or a Harrisburg address, and we're not going to rent a Philadelphia mailbox to look like we do. Some publishing companies do exactly that, and a company willing to fake its address deserves a second look on everything else it tells you. Pennsylvania authors work with us by phone and email, and here the clock is on your side: our lines are open 11am–8pm Eastern, Monday through Friday, and Pennsylvania is Eastern — no conversion, no math, call after dinner if that's when the house gets quiet. Printed proofs and author copies ship to your door whether that door is in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Altoona, or a township in the Poconos, and your finished book lists on Amazon and Barnes & Noble the same way a book from any publisher does.
One team handles everything: complete book publishing, children's books with custom illustrations, memoirs and life stories — a natural fit in the state of Buck, Michener, and Dillard — and Christian publishing. If you'd rather read before you talk, start with our guide to how to publish a book, the plain-English breakdown of what publishing really costs, and the full price list, then book a free consultation when you're ready. If you split time across state lines, the same straight answers are on our New York, Illinois, and Georgia publishing pages.
A real consultant — not an autoresponder — will call you back with your options and your exact price.
No. Our only office is in Norcross, Georgia, and we'd rather tell you that than list a Rittenhouse Square suite nobody works from. Pennsylvania authors work with us by phone and email — and since Pennsylvania is in the Eastern time zone, our 11am–8pm hours are your hours exactly. Every proof and author copy ships to a Pennsylvania address. If a publisher shows you a prestige Philadelphia address, ask who actually answers the door there.
If your manuscript genuinely fits — scholarly work for Penn, Pitt, Penn State, or Temple's presses, agented trade work for Running Press, poetry for the Pitt Poetry Series or Autumn House's contests — querying costs nothing but time, and we'd tell you to try. Most first-time manuscripts, especially memoirs, children's books, and family histories, fall outside those lists. Assisted publishing is the better fit when yours does, or when you'd rather keep your rights and publish on your own timeline than wait months on submission windows.
Almost no trade house does, in Pennsylvania or anywhere — memoirs by people who aren't public figures are the manuscripts publishers decline most. That has nothing to do with whether the story deserves a book; Pennsylvania's own shelf runs from Buck's Bucks County to Dillard's Pittsburgh. Our memoir publishing service exists for exactly this: your story, professionally edited and designed, under your name, with 100% of rights and royalties kept — and ghostwriting help if the writing itself is the hurdle.
Your book will be listed on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, and 20+ retail platforms, and any store — an independent in Squirrel Hill, a shop in Lancaster, a chain location in King of Prussia — can order it through standard wholesale channels. What no paid publisher can honestly promise is shelf space; stores choose their own stock. A guaranteed bookstore placement in a sales pitch is a warning sign, not a perk.
The same as anywhere: one payment between $699 and $7,999, currently 50% off this month, covering editing through distribution. There's no Pennsylvania surcharge and no markup on shipping proofs to Erie instead of Atlanta. Every package is on our pricing page, the reasoning is in our cost breakdown, and your number goes in writing before you pay a dollar.