Do you have a great idea for a book? We’re always looking for new authors to join our team. As a local publisher with low overhead costs, we can take a risk on some titles that traditional publishers can’t.

Most traditional publishing companies work on a first print run of 2,000 copies. If they’re convinced that a prospective author’s work will sell 2,000+ copies and it fits with the kind of work they’ll publish, traditional companies will take a punt on their work. Whilst publishers do try to market new works, 90-95% of sales tend to be generated directly by the author.

That’s a pretty difficult hurdle for most authors to hump over. Not many new authors can guarantee to sell thousands of books, so you’ll get a quick rejection letter and hear no more. We prefer to speak to authors directly, cutting out the middleman (remember, an agent’s fee takes another slice out of a small pot).

So, we’ll cut straight to the chase:

  • If we like your book,
  • If it requires only a reasonable amount of editing,
  • If it’s roughly the right length for the genre,
  • If it’s the kind of thing we publish, and
  • If you can generate 200-250 pre-orders for your book on our website (for the right titles we might go a little lower)…

Then we’ll publish your book and you can start earning royalties from day one. We’ll use our contacts and marketing to try to get your book out to a wider audience. Remember, we’re a small but growing local business. Our success is based on your success, and your success is based on ours. We’ll take a chance on you that a traditional publisher wouldn’t, and you’ll take a chance on us.

We’re less likely to publish anything which requires the services of a specialist illustrator throughout. If you’re interested in producing a children’s book, for example, do bear in mind that if we have to pay out hundreds of pounds (or more) to an illustrator, we need to be able to build in enough margin through sales to justify the cost. On the other hand, if your book is already illustrated to a professional standard, that’s another matter!

We’re also less likely to publish books containing full-colour photographs. The simple reason? Printing costs more than double when printing in colour, and that can’t always be recouped through the sale price of your book. It depends on the idea, but when the profit margins are smaller, we need to be able to guarantee to sell more copies in order to be able to pay you royalties for your work.

However, as of August 2020 we now have a cost-effective method of publishing books with a small amount of colour coverage: children’s books with colour drawings, photos that only take up part of a page, or colour charts and graphs.

We are especially wanting to hear from authors in the categories of history, sports and music with a connection to Sheffield and the surrounding area, but we’ll take a look at anything. If it’s something interesting or completely offbeat that captures our imagination, no problem!