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 · Answered within 30 days
Why us, and not someone bigger
Because a bigger publisher will probably not read you at all. 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 sent to us, and we reply to all of it within 30 days. That is not a claim about our taste. It is a promise about manners, and it is the first thing you should hold us to.
What being new means
We have no published books yet. You should weigh that properly, and you should ask us the question a new publisher finds hardest: what do you actually think this book can do, and on what basis?
Our answer is that we will tell you what we think, what we would spend, and what we are unsure about — before you sign anything — and we will not dress a forecast up as a promise. Everything else on this page is a commitment you can check from the outside, which is the only kind a house in our position has any business making.
One list, one desk
We intend to publish six to ten books a year, because that is the number one person can genuinely read, edit and stand behind. The publisher who reads your submission is the one who acquires it, works on the structure, signs off the cover and answers the phone in year three. There is no acquisitions meeting to survive and nobody to be handed on to.
For each book we commission specialist editors — structural, line, technical review where the argument needs it, and an independent proofreader — chosen for your subject rather than assigned by rota. If we ever grew to the point where we could not read everything ourselves, we would have broken the thing that makes us worth choosing.
What we cannot do yet
We cannot outbid a large imprint, and we will not pretend the advance is beside the point when it plainly matters to you. We have no prize record, no backlist and no sales history to show you, because we have not published anything yet.
What we can offer is a decision in 30 days instead of a year, an editor who stays with the book, and a publisher who intends to be there for the second one. If what your book really needs is a six-figure advance and a supermarket buy, go and get it — and we will tell you so, rather than waste a year of your life finding out.
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. If you would rather ask something first, write to us.
Submission guidelines →