Start your book

About

An independent publishing operation.

Cantu Publishing is a small, independent publishing operation. It exists to do the part of book-making that stands between a finished manuscript and a finished book: carefully, at a human scale, and without the mystique.

  1. You work with a person

    There is no account manager, no ticket queue and no handoff between departments. You talk directly to the person doing the work on your book, which is the only arrangement under which anyone can actually answer your questions.

  2. Nothing is explained in jargon on purpose

    Publishing has a vocabulary, and some of it is genuinely useful. But it is often used to make an ordinary process sound like one you could not manage without help. We explain the terms that matter to a decision you are making, and leave the rest alone.

  3. The inside of a book matters as much as the cover

    Interior design is the part most people never think about and every reader feels. Margins, typeface, spacing and chapter openings are what make two hundred pages comfortable to read. We treat that as craft rather than as a file conversion.

  4. We would rather tell you no

    If a manuscript is not ready, or a service would not improve your book enough to justify its cost, we will say so. Selling someone work they do not need is a short-term business, and this is not one.

  5. The goal is a finished book

    Most unpublished manuscripts are not unfinished because the writing stopped. They are unfinished because the next step was unclear and nobody was there to name it. Getting projects over that line is the whole purpose of this operation.

  6. What the book earns is yours

    We charge for work, not for a share of your book. There is no percentage of royalties, no representation contract, and no arrangement where marketing a book buys us a cut of it. If you run an advertising campaign through us, you pay for the campaign and keep everything the book makes.

Two properties, one operation

Cantu Publishing is the broad publishing arm: fiction, nonfiction, memoir, biography, essays, specialty and personal books, and the production work behind all of them. PoemsPoetry is the specialized poetry side, built for collections and poet profiles. Different rooms, same building. If you write to either one, it reaches the same people.

Visit poemspoetry.com

Plainly

What we do not promise

Worth stating plainly, because this industry has a reputation and some of it is deserved.

  • We do not promise sales, rankings, reviews or royalties. Nobody can.
  • We do not promise your book will be picked up, promoted or noticed.
  • We do not describe publishing as a way to make money.
  • We do not claim credentials, affiliations or endorsements we do not have.
  • We do not take on work we do not think will improve your book.
  • We do not promise what an advertising campaign will return. That depends on the budget behind it and on a great deal of chance.
  • We do not take a percentage of your sales, and we do not sign authors to representation contracts.
Tell us about your book