How we
publish.

Verlagi is a traditional publisher. We choose a small number of books, invest our own money in publishing them, and earn it back by selling them. Authors never pay us anything, at any stage, under any name. When the book earns, the author earns.

The list is small: six to ten books a year, the number a house our size can read, edit and stand behind. The person who reads your submission acquires it, works on it, and is still responsible in year three. Each book then gets its own team: editors, a technical reader where the argument needs one, a designer, an independent proofreader.

The administration, metadata, contracts, royalties, files, is largely automated, which keeps overhead low and puts more money into the books. It stops at the editorial line: no judgement about a book, and no editing of it, is made by a machine.

The editorial approach is set by the manuscript, not by a package. Some books need structural work before anything else: the argument reordered, a missing chapter written, a sagging middle cut. Some arrive sound and need only line editing and care. We tell you which we think yours is, and why, before you sign.

Edits are argued for, never imposed. You will get reasons, not tracked changes to accept in silence, and where you push back with better reasons, the book wins. Technical, medical or financial claims get a specialist reader, because trust in the argument is the product. The last person through is a proofreader who took no part in the editing.

Publication is the midpoint, not the end. Every title gets its own marketing plan: who its readers are, and where they can be reached. Our background is in search, digital marketing and ecommerce, and it goes to work here, because finding a book’s readers is half the job of publishing it.

Each book carries its ISBNs, is registered in the systems booksellers order from, and is sold through bookshops and online. Formats, paper and finishings are settled title by title.

We will not promise a supermarket stack or a bestseller list; a new house earns its reach book by book. What we can offer is sustained attention: the marketing does not stop in launch week, because most of a book’s commercial life happens long after it.

Books stay available for as long as they have readers. The titles that keep selling years after publication are what a house is made of, and building that backlist is the plan. We choose books we expect to be selling in ten years.

The direction of money never reverses: it flows from readers, through us, to you. There is no reading fee, no publishing fee, no contribution to costs, and no obligation to buy copies of your own book. Anyone requesting payment in Verlagi’s name is not us.

The terms are set out in the agreement and explained before you sign, alongside what we think, what we would spend, and what we are unsure about. We cannot outbid a large imprint on advances, and we say so. What you get is a publisher whose money is at risk beside your time, which concentrates the mind wonderfully on both sides.

Questions about any of this, before or after submitting, come straight to [email protected].