Why send it
to us.
A fair question, and one most publishers never answer. Here is ours, including the parts that don’t flatter us.
No agent required · No author fees · Initial response within 30 days
What we publish
Science & Technology
Popular science, computing, AI, engineering and medicine.
Submit →Business, Finance & Economics
Founders, leadership, markets, investing and the future of work.
Submit →Ideas & Society
Psychology, cognition, decision-making and how we live now.
Submit →Selected Fiction
Speculative and near-future novels with a real idea at the centre.
Submit →Not our list:poetry, children’s and picture books, screenplays, comics and graphic novels. We would rather tell you here than take a month to tell you by email.
What a small house can give you
One person reads your book, and that person can say yes. There is no reader’s report climbing a chain and no acquisitions meeting three weeks out. You get an answer within 30 days, agented or not.
We publish six to ten books a year, and the number is the point. It is what a house this size can read, edit, design, and still be selling properly a year after publication. Every title carries real money, because there is nowhere on a list this small for a book to hide.
Most UK houses take agented submissions only, and most agents work on no-response-means-no. Three months of silence, and you are meant to infer the answer. We read everything that arrives, and we answer all of it.
What being new means
We are a new house and this is our founding list: no backlist to show you, no prize record. What we have instead is a list small enough that every book on it matters commercially, and a publisher who cannot afford to let one disappear.
Before you sign anything we will tell you what we think, what we would spend, and what we are unsure about. We will not dress a forecast up as a promise.
The person who reads it
Verlagi was founded by Jamie Rand, whose background is in book production and academic publishing, and on the commercial side of it: what a print run costs, what a distributor takes, and how much of a book’s life happens after publication day. Most of it, as it turns out. The rest of that career has been in digital marketing and search, which is the half of the job most small publishers get wrong.
Jamie reads the submissions, makes the acquisition decisions, and is still there in year three. No committee, and nobody to be handed on to.
Editorial and specialist expertise is commissioned for each title: editors, a technical reader where the argument needs one, a designer, an independent proofreader, chosen for the subject. Small does not mean amateur. It means the people on your book were picked for your book.
The terms, before you ask
We ask for world rights in all languages and formats: print, ebook and audio. That is what a small house needs to earn back what it invests in a book. The grant is not unconditional: if we stop keeping your book available, the rights come back to you.
Advances are modest. The money goes into editing, design, production and marketing instead. Royalties are a share of what the book earns, on every format, and the schedule is set out in plain figures in the offer, before you sign. Statements and payments are quarterly; the trade standard is twice a year.
Read enough?
Send a covering letter, a short synopsis and your opening pages. We answer everything within 30 days.
Reading window: open until 30 September 2026. Everything received before then has an answer by 31 October.
What we cannot do yet
We cannot outbid a large imprint, and we will not pretend advances don’t matter.
What we offer is an answer in 30 days, an editor who stays, and a publisher planning to be there for your second book. If yours needs a six-figure advance and a supermarket buy, we will say so and wish you well, rather than waste a year of your life.
Guides, while you decide
What we look for, written down properly
How to get published without an agent
Which publishers read direct, what to send them, the fee traps to walk past, and what to check before signing.
How to write a synopsis
What a synopsis is actually for, the rules that never change, a structure that works for fiction and non-fiction, and the failures we see weekly.
How to write a non-fiction proposal
The seven parts of a proposal publishers weigh, how to choose comparable titles, and an honest word about platform. The book need not be finished.
What happens after you submit
The publisher’s side of the desk: what happens to your manuscript after you press send, at most houses and, step by step, at this one.
How we publish
The process, stage by stage: editing, design, printing, selling, and the backlist a book joins.
Thirty days
from now.
That is when you will have an answer from us: yes, no, or a request to read more. Send a covering letter, a short synopsis and your opening pages, and we will do the rest. Send by 30 September and you will hear by 31 October. If you would rather ask something first, write to us.
Submission guidelines →