Can you give us a snapshot of Asterism’s distro roster?
We’re over 216 active publishers now. We’re adding them at a slower clip than in the aftermath of Small Press Distribution, when we were acting as a lifeboat and bringing on as many as we could reasonably support. We finished 2025 at 87% year-over-year revenue increase, and it’s exciting to see the model proving out.
What’s your capacity for onboarding new accounts?
We’re making the most of the space that we have, but we’re looking at expansion and speaking to potential investors. Larger presses have expressed interest in more advanced services, like warehousing and receiving larger quantities of inventory, and we’re looking at positions that make us more accessible to East Coast booksellers.
How are you boosting the discoverability of small-press titles?
We’re rolling out a new iteration of the website to heighten BISAC searches, and we’ll be building in features to request digital and physical ARCs. We’ve always done a print catalog, and we’re playing with a monthly catalog to get the freshest titles in front of booksellers.
What has driven Asterism to launch so many projects within a five-year span?
Anytime another company’s squeezing small presses, it opens up more opportunity. We’re always looking for diversifying incomes, and sometimes we have to build our own thing. In conversations with publishers, I’m hearing that the current ways of doing things aren’t working for many of us. Being a scrappy little upstart, questioning preconceived notions, seems to be resonating with people.
