His books include The Literary World of San Francisco from City Lights Books, described by the Washington Post as "by far the best literary guide to any American city," and Willeford, a biography of Charles Willeford, the Kafka of the crime novel. Herron served as the main editor for the multi-volume set of the Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick, and also has compiled critical collections on pop novelist Stephen King.

His interest in Robert E. Howard is long-standing. "Conan vs. Conantics," an essay in which Herron argued the merits of Howard's original Conan tales, first appeared in 1976. He edited the landmark critical anthology The Dark Barbarian: The Writings of Robert E. Howard for Greenwood Press in 1984, which inaugurated serious literary exploration into the work of the prolific Texan.