Four publishers of extreme horror dominated the 2020 Splatterpunk Awards nominations with the new kid on the block, Death’s Head Press, leading the charge with six nominations.

Necro Publications earned four nominations. Deadite Press and Grindhouse Press each received three.

All told, the top four publishers accounted for 16 of the 31 Splatterpunk Awards nominations. Overall, the nominations were spread out as 15 different publishers shared in the 31 nominations with one self-published author, Matt Shaw, making the cut. The link to the official announcement of the nominations is here. I also wrote a news article on the nominations here.

Necro Publications, Deadite Press, and Grindhouse Press are no strangers to the Splatterpunk Awards. During the first two years of the awards in 2018 and 2019, Necro Publications tallied five nominations with Deadite and Grindhouse garnering four each.

A quick overview of the four publishers:

• Death’s Head Press hit the scene in January 2019 with its first book, And Hell Followed, an anthology of apocalyptic horror influenced by the Book of Revelation. Incidentally, And Hell Followed was one of two nominations for Death’s Head Press in the Best Anthology category. Not a bad beginning for the dynamic duo of Jarod Barbee and Patrick C. Harrison III.
• Founded in 1993, Necro Publications specializes in hardcore horror. Their mission: “To constantly push the envelope and the reader with modern adult genre fiction.”
• Deadite Press specializes in cult horror fiction. It’s an imprint of Eraserhead Press, which has been publishing bizarro fiction since 1999. Deadite Press is “dedicated to publishing the goriest, craziest, and strangest stories in existence.”
• Founded in 2010, Grindhouse Press is interested in “horror, extreme horror, transgressive fiction, sleaze, exploitation, dark humor, and general weirdness with dark themes.”

Horror fiction is already a niche genre market, making extreme horror an extremely niche sub-genre market. So, a huge thank-you should go to Wrath James White and Brian Keene for founding the Splatterpunk Awards and shining a light on the darkest corners of horror fiction.

With so many publishers consistently producing quality level content, readers of extreme horror should feel lucky. Because something tells me, publishers of extreme horror are not doing it for the money. And without passionate publishers, we don’t have the quality or quantity of extreme horror fiction available today.

So, check out the links below and see what the best in Splatterpunk has to offer. (Note: Of course, these are not the only extreme horror publishers. I just focused on the four top nominees for the purposes of this one article. Other publishers are listed next to their nominated works in the 2020 Splatterpunk Awards news release here.)

Death’s Head Press

Necro Publications

Deadite Press

Grindhouse Press

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RELATED LINKS:

Christine Morgan leads list of Splatterpunk Awards nominees