What authors say, including when it is critical
We publish the four-star reviews alongside the five-star ones. A page of unbroken praise tells a reader nothing except that someone curated it.
docs/CONTENT-CHECKLIST.md.
The copyedit was the part I resented paying for and the part that changed the book most. I got the manuscript back with about nine hundred tracked changes and a letter explaining the four habits behind most of them. I have not made those four mistakes since.
I had a keynote date and a manuscript that was thirty per cent too long. They planned backwards from the date, told me in month two which chapters had to go, and hit it. The honesty about what would not fit was worth more than the encouragement.
Nobody had explained the storyboard stage to me. I thought illustration meant sending a manuscript and getting pictures back. Sitting down and deciding where every page turn fell was when the book actually became a book.
My editor asked what the book was about underneath the births, and I did not have an answer for two weeks. When I found it, I cut eighty pages without minding. I would not have got there alone.
They would not let me approve the book from a screen. The first physical proof came back and the blacks were wrong, which I would never have seen otherwise. We went round three times. That insistence is why the book is what it is.
I sent a collection with unusual spacing and expected a fight. Instead the typesetter asked which line was longest so the measure could be set from it. That one question told me the book was in the right hands.
The index is why libraries picked it up, and I would not have commissioned one on my own. The scheduling was slower than I hoped, though they warned me it would be and explained why each time.
What I valued was being told what they could not promise. No sales projections, no talk of bestseller lists. Just a list of what would be delivered and a report afterwards showing it had been.
How we handle testimonials
Testimonials are the most abused form of evidence in this industry. These are the rules we hold ourselves to.
Written permission, every time
No quote appears here without the author confirming in writing that we may publish it, attributed as shown.
We do not edit for flattery
Quotes are trimmed for length only, never to remove a reservation. If an author said the scheduling was slower than they hoped, that stays in.
No incentives
We do not offer discounts, gifts or anything else in exchange for a testimonial. A bought opinion is worth exactly what was paid for it.
No invented ratings
Where a rating appears, it was given by that author. We do not publish an aggregate score across testimonials, and none of this content is submitted to search engines as review markup.
Withdrawable at any time
An author can ask us to remove their testimonial for any reason, and we do it without asking why.
Prefer the detail?
Our success stories go further than a quote — the structural problem an editor found, the chapters that were cut, the proof rounds it took to get the colour right.
Your manuscript is ready for its next chapter
Thirty minutes, no obligation, and an honest answer about what your book needs. If we think you should keep revising, that is what you will hear.
Your manuscript stays confidential. We claim no rights in your work at any stage.