In the complex and rapidly changing world of publishing, the options available to writers are growing and are more accessible. Understanding the three tiers of publishing will help us pitch and place our work. As a memoirist, I will concentrate specifically on work I have read and feel passionately about.

Random House is the largest trade-book publisher in the world. It was acquired in 1998 by Bertelsmann AG, one of the world's foremost media companies. Random House is international, with Random House publishing companies in nineteen countries. Through these companies Random House, Inc. sells books in almost every part of the world. Random House, Inc.'s adult publishing groups are the Crown Publishing Group, the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, and the Random House Publishing Group. Together, these groups and their imprints publish fiction and nonfiction, both original and reprints, by some of the foremost and most popular writers of our time.  Perhaps one of the more recent famous (fake) memoirs to come out of Random House was James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces.

I am currently reading The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr, for the Creative Non-Fiction class 230.  Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc first published this book in 1995.  Earlier this year, I read Junot Diaz and Nick Hornby. Over the years the Penguin Group has published these, along with many of the most prized and prestigious writers of memoir.

Penguin Group (USA) Inc. is the U.S. affiliate of the internationally-renowned Penguin Group, one of the largest English-language trade book publishers in the world. The concern was formed in 1996 after a merger occurred between Penguin Books USA and The Putnam Berkley Group, Penguin Group (USA), The Penguin Group, has subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa and China, is led by CEO and Chairman, John Makinson, and is owned by Pearson plc. Pearson is an international media company with market-leading businesses in education, business information, and consumer publishing.  Penguin Group (USA) publishes under a wide range of prominent imprints and trademarks, among them Viking, G. P. Putnam's Sons, The Penguin Press, Riverhead Books, Dutton, Penguin Books, Berkley Books, Gotham Books, Portfolio, New American Library, Plume, Tarcher, Philomel, Grosset & Dunlap, Puffin, and Frederick Warne.

Still within this first tier is Alfred A. Knopf, another imprint of Random House. It was founded in 1915 and has long been known as a publisher of distinguished hardcover fiction and nonfiction. Knopf is the company behind the recent publication of a memoir written by Tony Blair (Prime Minister of my mother country.)

Another title that I am currently reading that falls into the first tier is Jeanette Walls Half Broke Horses by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. Simon & Schuster is owned by Viacom. Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln ("Max") Schuster founded Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, in New York City in 1924. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin, and HarperCollins. It publishes over two thousand titles annually under 35 different imprints.

Bloomsbury USA, Boa and Akashic fall within this tier.

In 2007, I attended a reading at Skylight Books in Los Feliz, to hear writers T. Cooper, and Chris Abani. The works that they read from were published by the Brooklyn-based independent publisher, Akashic Books. Although the works mentioned were fiction, Akashic also publishes creative non-fiction, namely memoir. Their collection began with Arthur Nersesian's THE FUCK UP in 1996, and has since expanded to include Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series, Chris Abani's Black Goat Poetry Series, and the internationally successful "Noir" series, originating with Brooklyn Noir, since expanding to international titles such as Delhi Noir and Havana Noir.

Bloomsbury USA is a general interest publisher of adult and children's books. Established in 1998 as an American subsidiary of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (British publisher of, among others, J.K. Rowling), they are the publisher of the bestselling books Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Rats, Schott's Original Miscellany, My Horizontal Life and Kitchen Confidential, as well as works by award-winning writers Alan Hollinghurst, William Boyd, Melissa Fay Greene, Robert Sullivan, and David Leavitt. In the winter of 2008, Bloomsbury launched Bloomsbury Press, an imprint focusing on serious nonfiction under the editorship of Peter Ginna.

OV Books, Tin House, Beacon Press, Red Hen Press are all examples of third tier publishing. My favorite magazine, Mslexia falls within this category as well. Mslexia is a British magazine for women writers, founded by Debbie Taylor and edited by Daneet Steffens. Mslexia contains articles on writing and writers and encourages independent publishers and bookshops and innovations in writing. Many well-respected writers have contributed articles, including Patricia Duncker, Sara Maitland, Trezza Azzopardi, Amanda Craig and Linda Leatherbarrow. It was first published in March 1999 and is produced four times a year. Mslexia has about 11,000 subscribers.

In 1994, Mark E. Cull and Kate Gale founded Red Hen Press, where I interned in 2007. It is a non-profit literary press specializing in poetry, literary fiction, memoirs, and literary criticism. Red Hen has published more than 170 books and has established a significant cultural presence in Southern California and beyond. In 2007, Red Hen published twenty books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, including significant works by David Mason, Maurya Simon, Chris Abani, Charles Harper Webb, and Eloise Klein Healy.

As well as the tiers above, there has been a greater move toward self-publishing.  One might classify this as the fourth tier. In my role as a facilitator for Paper Legacies, a memoir writing service (www.paperlegacies.net), I have produced, printed, and bound anthologies using nothing other than my laptop and home printer.