A finished manuscript that nobody can buy is a private document. Publishing is the unglamorous machinery (files, formats, identifiers, retailers) that turns it into something a stranger can find.
Publishing is a bridge, and most of it is infrastructure rather than art. A manuscript has to become a typeset interior and a print-ready cover; it needs an ISBN and a registered imprint; it has to be encoded for each retailer's specification, priced in each territory, and listed with metadata that makes it findable by someone who does not already know it exists.
None of that is difficult once you know it. All of it is easy to get wrong the first time, and several parts of it are painful to correct after publication. The house has been doing this since 1844, the formats have changed beyond recognition and the job has not: get the book made properly, and get it where the readers are.
These are genuinely different arrangements, not price tiers of the same one. Which suits you depends on how much control you want and how much of the work you want to do.
- 01
Hybrid publishing
The house's own model, and the reason it reopened. You keep creative control and 100% of your rights; the house brings the editorial, design, production and distribution of a traditional publisher, and is paid for that work rather than with a share of your book.
- 02
Self-publishing support
You run the publication and the house does the parts you would rather not. Manuscript preparation, cover, interior, files and retailer setup, with the accounts and the imprint remaining yours throughout.
- 03
Print-on-demand
Copies printed and shipped only when ordered, so there is no inventory to fund and no stock to store. It keeps a title perpetually available on the major online retailers, which is what most independent books actually need.
- 04
Ebook production
The book formatted and encoded for the ebook platforms, Kindle, Apple Books, Nook, Kobo, Google Play: each of which has its own specification and its own way of rejecting files.
- 05
Distribution and retail setup
Listing, metadata, categories, pricing and territory settings across the online retailers, plus the wholesale channel that physical bookshops order through if they choose to.
Four commitments, and one thing the house will not tell you.
- 01
The rights stay yours
Completely, in every format, for the life of the book. The house is paid for the work it does and takes no share of what the book earns. That is the arrangement, at every tier and every price.
- 02
Delivered on the date agreed
Publication dates matter: they anchor everything else you do around the book. The schedule is agreed at the start and you are told immediately if anything threatens it.
- 03
Priced to the work
Competitive pricing that does not come out of the quality of what you receive. You are quoted for your book rather than sorted into a package, and told when you need less than you asked for.
- 04
No promises about sales
Nobody can guarantee you a bestseller list, a review, a media placement or a number, and any publisher who does is selling you something other than publishing. The house will tell you what it will do, and what it cannot control.
Eight steps from a manuscript to a book in a catalogue, and you see what is happening at each of them.
One-to-one discussion
A personal consultation about your goals and your book, which is what the publishing plan is built from. Different books want genuinely different routes.
Reviewing your work
The manuscript is read and assessed, with any editorial work it still needs identified before production starts rather than discovered during it.
Book design
Cover and interior designed together, the jacket, and the typesetting that decides whether the book is comfortable to read for three hundred pages.
Printing and binding
The technical work of turning approved files into a physical object: trim, bleed, paper, binding, and the proofs that catch what a screen cannot show.
Registration and imprint
ISBNs assigned, the imprint and the copyright registered, and the metadata written, the record that makes the book findable rather than merely available.
Distribution
The book listed with the online retailers and made available through the wholesale channel that physical bookshops order from.
Launch support
The material around the publication (blurb, description, categories and keywords) prepared so the listing works on the day it goes live.
Post-publication report
What actually happened, in figures: where the book is listed, how the listings are performing, and what that suggests about what to do next.
A few of the people the house has worked with, in their own words.
I had eleven years of notes and no book. What I got back read like me on a good day, my turns of phrase, my arguments, and none of the padding I would have added myself. The first chapter arrived and I stopped worrying.
Marianne ElleryIndependent author The structural edit was not comfortable reading. It told me the second half started in the wrong place, which I had suspected for a year and nobody had said out loud. Moving three chapters fixed a problem I had been trying to solve with better sentences.
Devon AlukoIndependent author What sold me was being told I did not need half of what I had asked for. I came in wanting the full package and left with a cover, a proofread and an honest explanation of why the rest would not have helped yet.
Priya RaghunathanIndependent author Three cover directions, all of them plausible, none of them the thing I had described. The one I picked worked at the size that actually matters, I could recognise it in a list of forty other books, which is more than I can say for my first attempt.
Tobias HearnIndependent author I own the book outright and that was written down before I paid anything. After two years of being quoted percentages by people who would not put them in writing, that was the whole reason I stayed.
Cecile MarchandIndependent author The audiobook took longer than I expected and they told me why each time rather than going quiet. The narrator they cast got my grandmother's accent right, which I had assumed would be the thing I had to let go of.
Nathan BoakyeIndependent author
The ones authors should ask any publisher before signing anything.
Manuscript assessment, editing, cover design, interior formatting, ISBN registration, and distribution, the whole path from a finished document to a listed book. You can take all of it or the parts you need; authors routinely arrive with the writing and editing already done.
Traditional publishing means a publishing house acquires your book, funds its production, and handles distribution, in exchange for rights and a share of the earnings; the trade-off is less creative control and a long, uncertain acquisition process. Self-publishing means you fund and control everything, and keep everything. Hybrid publishing sits between: professional production and distribution, bought as a service, with the rights and the control staying with you. Which is right depends on your goals, your genre and your timeline, and it is worth a conversation rather than a form.
Print and digital both, and audio if you want it. Readers have genuinely different habits, and a book available in only one format is unavailable to a substantial share of the people who would read it.
It will be listed on the major online retailers, and it will be made available through the wholesale channel that physical bookshops order from. Those are different things, and it matters: being available to bookshops means a shop can order your book, not that any shop will stock it. Shelf space is a buying decision made by each retailer, and no publisher can commit it on your behalf.
Yes, proofreading through to substantive editing, with editors who work across genres. Their brief is to improve the technical quality of the manuscript while preserving your voice. If your book has already been edited elsewhere, it can go straight into production.
There are different levels of support depending on how much of the work you want done for you, from essential production through to a full publication with distribution and launch material. The price follows the work rather than a tier chart, and you will be told when a smaller package would serve you as well.
The house's historical list is public and considerable, it published L. Frank Baum, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Gene Stratton-Porter among many others, and the catalogue is on the site. For contemporary work, what any author should ask for is examples in their own genre, and the house will show you what it has. What it will not do is imply that another author's outcome predicts yours.
You do, completely. The author holds 100% of the rights to their work, in every format, for its whole life. The house is paid for the work it does, not with a share of the book. That is the arrangement the house reopened in 2008 to offer, and it does not change with the tier, the price or the point at which you come to us.
Yes. Your name is on the cover and in the record. Everyone who works on the book (writer, editor, designer) works on your book, and none of them is credited on it unless you ask for them to be.
Yes. Your story is yours, and nothing about the project leaves the house. We will sign your NDA before you send anything, or supply ours if you would rather use one.
No. Six disciplines are available and you take the ones you need. Authors arrive here at every stage (with an idea, a half-draft, or a finished manuscript that only needs a cover and a shelf) and the work starts where you actually are.
It depends on the work: length, how much research is involved, how much of the book already exists, and which disciplines you need. There is no list price for a book, and any firm who gives you one before reading your material is quoting something other than your book. Tell us where you are and we will price the actual job.
Move the marker. You do not need to know what to call it: you only need to know where you are.
Tell us where your manuscript is, where you want it to go, and we'll show you what's possible.