On the Fringe Press was founded by D. Michael Whelan (they/them) in 2024 as they were finishing their medical memoir and preparing it for submission. Rejecting traditional publishing constraints, they recognized the industry’s flaws, particularly unfair deals that threaten authorial rights and creative control, genre pigeonholing, and that “need” for happy endings. Whelan established a publisher focused on authenticity, challenging conventions, and valuing authors’ stories and emotions above all else.
They were excited.
The dream of getting that six-figure advance and landing on the New York Times Bestseller list after being published by one of the “Big 5” publishers, so close… Then they were smacked upside the head by Britney Spears’s (You Drive Me) Crazy (Stop Remix). Check it out on YouTube; two minutes in.
As much as they wanted that dream, it wasn’t worth the cost of their story. Their rights to their story and creative control are being taken away if they sign that tempting dotted line…well, it wouldn’t get that far. They’d just walk out of negotiations as they were told those were dealbreakers, which almost always are, even with small publishing houses.
As a book editor for over fifteen years and in the industry longer than that, they knew better.
They were debating on self-publishing under their own author imprint (which they still may do) when one of their authors contacted them. After years of trying to sell a series that should have already sold, the author felt defeated and tired. Never one to set false expectations or praise, D. Michael Whelan really didn’t understand WTH everyone was thinking. This series is an incredible genre mashup, which was a problem. Many, including two agents, kept trying to stuff these books inside a box.
Romance, but not enough sex. Action/Adventure, but what’s with all these feelings? YA? Wait, all the characters are in their thirties or older. (To this day, this is the greatest facepalm moment they’ve ever had about any book.)
As much as their author may have felt defeated, D. Michael was just p*ssed.
This should already be out in the world; they could have sold it up and down without taking a breath. Mashups meant more opportunities for sales. They knew that even though it wasn’t their job to sell.
Suddenly, ghosts of book deals that had gone bad came back to them. Other authors they worked with, those who had reached that benchmark of being published by one of those “Big 5,” wasn’t anything they expected it to be. Pennies per book, left on their own for marketing, losing the ability to publish work because their publisher closed its doors. Though if it had sunk to the great literary beyond, that now nonexistent publisher, still owned that author’s work.
D. Michael found themselves advising authors on how to work with or “deal with” agents, editors, and contract red flags, preparing them for they would lose no matter what, with whispering sneaky backdoors into their contracts to “revisit” the issue, hopefully to their author’s satisfaction. Having all these flashbacks for days, they could not get over all the amazing stories they’d worked on, which were more difficult to define, stories considered controversial when they were simply honest.
They deserved their time to shine.
They forgot their book (hopefully not forever) and began to set in motion what would become On the Fringe Press. A traditional publisher (yes, the irony) that refuses to be traditional by allowing authors to maintain their rights, creative control, and pay them three times the industry standard.
A publisher who isn’t interested in a “fall in your lap bestseller” but prefers one that must be sought out. A publisher who wants to get angry, cry, rejoice, and even get scared by what they read and choose to share with the world.
Books that are different, either in how they’re told or because of where, more accurately who, they’re coming from. Vulnerability. Authenticity. Challenging conventions and perceptions and educating others. Make us feel something. Even if that feeling is the need to wet our pants, because that means we’re feeling something.
There is nothing more beautiful than the written word and nothing more sacred than a person’s stories.
That’s what we care about.
That’s what we want.
Or just to be upstarts because we love that, too. D. Michael Whelan has referred to themselves as a resident hellraiser on every social media bio they have. They never once said they were lying. “A revolution, now that’s my kind of party.”