Independent book publishing
You have done the writing. Everything between a finished document and a real book someone can hold is our work: the editing, the typesetting, the cover, the print files, the publishing machinery. We will walk you through all of it.
You do not need to know how publishing works before you get in touch. Most people who write to us don’t.
A book interior, with its margins showing. Getting this right is most of the work.
What we actually do
“Publishing services” is a vague phrase, so here is the plain version. These are the pieces of work that stand between a finished manuscript and a finished book. A project might need all of them or only one.
Getting the text itself in order: consistent structure, clean files, chapters where chapters should be, and the obvious problems found before anyone starts setting pages.
Reading the work closely and marking what needs attention, from structural notes down to a final proofread for typos. How far this goes is decided with you, per project.
Turning a document into a set of pages: typeface and size, margins, running heads, page numbers, chapter openings, front and back matter. This is the part that makes a book feel like a book.
Front, spine and back, built to the exact dimensions your printer requires, including bleed, barcode space, and a print-ready file that will not be rejected at upload.
Preparing the files and listing details for the platform you are publishing through, such as Amazon KDP: trim size, metadata, categories, description, and the upload itself. Your book can be listed in marketplaces worldwide.
Physical copies of your own book, ordered at printing cost and shipped to you. Thirty, fifty, a hundred. For selling in person, for local shops, for events, or for giving away.
Optional, tiered ad campaigns built on a decade of running them: genre and demographic targeting, static and dynamic bidding, managed against the budget you set. You keep everything your book earns.
A page for you and a page for the book, so there is somewhere to send people that is not only a retailer listing.
How it works
Publishing a book is a long process, but it is not a complicated one to understand. This is the whole shape of it.
A finished manuscript, a folder of drafts, a notebook, or a description of what you intend to write. You do not need to have it figured out. Tell us what you have and what you want it to become.
We read what you send and come back with an honest assessment: what the work needs, which services would actually help, roughly what is involved, and what it will cost. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.
The production work: preparation, editing, interior layout, cover, and the files and details the publishing platform requires. You are kept in the loop rather than left waiting.
You see the finished interior and cover before anything is published, and revisions are handled according to what was agreed at the start of the project. Nothing goes out that you have not approved.
Final files are prepared and the book is set up on its intended platform, with the metadata and print specifications correct so it prints the way it looked on screen.
It has a cover, an interior, a listing, and a copy you can hold. If you want a box of them to sell or give away, we can order those too. That is the whole point of this, and it is a genuinely good day.
If you are not sure where to begin
People come to us at every possible stage. All of these are fine, and none of them is too early to get in touch.
You also do not need to know what any of this means before you write to us:
The following publishing terms are struck through, because you do not need to know them: ISBN, KDP, bleed, trim size, metadata, print-ready PDF, front matter, distribution.
That is our side of the work. Explaining it in plain language, when it actually matters to a decision you are making, is part of the job.
Start the conversationRecent work
Each entry lists what the book is and which parts of its production we handled.
Puzzle books
Impossible Difficulty, Book One
The first in the Impossible Difficulty series. Dense, single-solution mazes for solvers who have exhausted the ordinary ones.
Coloring books
Adult Coloring Book
Stained glass motifs rendered as bold, clean coloring pages, built around the heavy leading lines the form is known for.
For poets
Poetry is not prose with shorter lines. It is set differently, read differently, and presented differently, and a collection deserves a space built for it rather than a shelf it happens to sit on.
So we built one. Poetry collections, poet profiles and poetry-focused publishing live on our sister site.
Cantu Publishing still handles the publishing work behind it. If you are unsure which of the two you want, write to either. It reaches the same people.
A few sentences is enough to start. We will read it and tell you honestly what we think the project needs.
