SPD was founded in 1969 by Peter Howard of Serendipity Books and Jack Shoemaker of Sand Dollar Press. The fledgling organization provided small-scale distribution services for only five publishers. Initially called Serendipity Books Distribution, it was renamed Small Press Distribution by the late 1970s. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the organization periodically assembled the new titles of their publishers into printed catalogs, thus providing a link to underground literature for writers and readers around the US.

By 1980, SPD was distributing the books of about 40 small publishers; by 1990, the number had grown to 330. SPD once distributed books for approximately 360 publishers.^[3] SPD became an official 501c3 non-profit in 1996. SPD announced their closure on their website on March 28, 2024.

In December 2020, SPD was under fire after a former employee posted an anonymous article on Medium^[4] with allegations of wage theft and discrimination based on race and gender,^[5] leading to an open letter calling for the resignation of executive director Brent Cunningham. By 2021, the majority of SPD staff, as well as multiple former staff members, attested to labor issues at SPD-including misconduct by multiple members of SPD leadership, wage violations, retaliation, and intimidation. Two of the former workers who attested to such labor issues had been asked to sign NDAs.^[6][7][8] In March 2021, the organization announced the pending departure of Brent Cunningham after internal investigations commissioned by the board of directors.^[9] SPD's Board President has stated that 5 total employees had been underpaid.^[10] The board of directors have not publicly responded to the allegations of wage theft.

In 2023, SPD had fundraised over $100k in order to implement new operations.^[11] In February 2024, they publicly stated they moved over 300,000 books from its warehouse to Ingram in order to cut costs.^[12] A month later, it announced on social media and its website that it was shutting down effective immediately.^[13][14] When SPD closed, many publishers publicly stated SPD didn't provide them owed money from previous payment periods.^{[15][16][17][18][19]}

• Publishers Weekly Feature Story, December 20, 1999
• Small Press website, March 28, 2024