Seeking Independent Authors...
Join us March 14-15 to share your story
The application for Indie Author Pavilion at the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books opened at noon (AZ time) today, July 9.
Our volunteer team works hard to create a great opportunity for independent authors to engage with festival attendees while selling and signing their books in the pavilions. Today we’ll provide some more details about how we work with indie authors and answer some FAQs.
If you’re an author whose books fit the criteria, we hope you might apply to join us at the next festival. And if you’re a reader, we hope this post makes you curious to meet some of our pavilion guests in March.
What’s the Indie Author Pavilion?
At the festival, three Indie Author Pavilions (Adult, Children, Teen/YA) are set up on the University of Arizona mall. Over 120 local, regional and nationally-known authors meet and greet their fans in three-hour time periods on either Saturday or Sunday.
The Indie Author Pavilions include authors of all genres and formats, including self-published, small/independent press, pay-to-publish, and books published only in digital format.
Is “indie author” just a way of saying “self-published”?
No. Our definition of Indie Author does include any author who is self-published, meaning that the 1) press that published the book is owned and run by the author or 2) when a vendor sells a book on the author’s behalf, they send the royalties directly to the author. And our Indie Author category also includes authors published through presses that operate as collectives, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies publishing multiple authors.
These organizations might be newer and smaller, publishing only a few volumes per year, or they might be part of a larger holding company or publicly traded company. The size of the press is not important. What distinguishes this group is that the publishers operate on a scale, or according to a business model (for example, print-on-demand or digital only, or the author is subsidizing the publishing costs and retains full creative control), where it makes sense to work independently of the industry’s primary full-service distributor, which distributes books on publishers’ behalf to major and independent booksellers.
Why make this distinction at your festival?
The more, the merrier! This is our way of including more authors than we can consider for our limited Presenting Author spots.
Since Indie Authors will sell their own books, this allows TFOB to include authors of books not carried by our official bookseller, the University of Arizona Campus Store.
What are the benefits for Indie Authors?
A spot at a shared table in a high-traffic area of the festival to give visibility to your book is the main attraction. Your name and links to your website and social media that you provide will appear on our website and in the Festival Guide published by the Arizona Daily Star.
Another plus: the opportunity to network with other Indie Authors, to see how others market their books, share tips, and be in community with writers from all over the country.
In addition to the three-hour time slot to meet readers and sell books, a handful of Indie Authors are invited every year to join Presenting Author panels. There’s no extra charge for this benefit nor can you request it. We will let you know if one of our panels has an open spot that fits your book. If you want to accept the honor and join the panel, we’ll plan your time-slot to allow for your participation and help you get connected to the other authors and moderator for the panel.
How to apply
Complete this application and check your email. You’ll receive a reply with a password that will allow you to submit a PDF copy of one book for review by our judges. The cost for the application is $50, non-refundable. Deadline is September 30.
TFOB received 200+ submissions for our Indie Author Pavilions each of the past two years. We have 120 combined (adult, children and teen) time slots available during the festival. We do not have space for everyone who submits their book for review, but we do maintain a wait list should a cancellation occur.
What’s the selection criteria?
All works submitted for review and all materials distributed or sold in one of our pavilions must be original works of the author with appropriate credit given to source material. Please submit your highest quality work published within the last two years.
Beyond that, TFOB does not publish selection criteria. Authors selected for the pavilion will submit works that are complete, carefully edited, and likely to be of the greatest interest to the Tucson Festival of Books audience.
Who can answer additional questions?
Please reach out by email to indieauthors@tucsonfestivalofbooks.org. Many thanks to our Indie Author volunteer co-chairs, Hilary Hamlin, Nancy Thompson and Pamela Claridge and to our anonymous judges for all their work on behalf of Indie Authors.
An important warning
The process described here is the only way for independent authors to participate in the festival. We only send solicitations to apply to authors who have applied with us before. We never charge an additional fee for appearance, beyond the $50 application fee. Any other solicitation to participate or have your book featured by Tucson Festival of Books in exchange for a fee is a scam. Please be mindful that author scams are rampant, and reach out to us at help@tucsonfestivalofbooks.org if you ever have any doubts about a communication you’ve received that purports to be from TFOB.
14th Annual Literary Awards Competition Now Open
The Tucson Festival of Books 14th Annual Literary Awards is now accepting fiction, non-fiction and poetry for the 2026 competition.
Submit five poems of any length, a short story or novel excerpt, or a nonfiction piece or book excerpt.
Maximum length for prose is 5,000 words per submission.
$20 entry fee
First-place winners in each category received $1,000, second-place $500, and third-place receives $250. All winners receive a scholarship to attend the Masters Workshop March 16-17 in Tucson, Arizona. The top 50 entrants are also invited to the workshop ($350 fee). Enter here by October 31, 2025.
Additional Free Contest Opportunity
Are you a self-published author of literary fiction looking for some additional exposure for your work? Check out the Samuel Richardson Prize for Best Self-Published Novel (or Story Collection) run by
Naomi Kanakia. Finalists and winners will be reviewed in the judges’ Substack newsletters. This contest is not affiliated with the festival, but , TFOB’s Executive Director, will serve as a judge. Deadline for submissions is July 31.
It is disappointing and, frankly, irritating to see emails and web pages from TFB that use the recently trendy but grammatically incorrect single parenthesis—e.g. “1).” I know of no circumstance in which open/half parentheses are grammatically acceptable. It should always be “(1).” If you aim to be a professional organization writing about professional writing and writers, best pick up a copy of The Chicago Manual of Style.