Few books, properly
We take on roughly six titles a year. It is a deliberate ceiling. A publisher who says yes to everything cannot give any single book the attention it needs, and most of the industry says yes to everything.
Who We Are
A small publisher, on purpose
Every great book begins with an idea. Most of them die somewhere between the idea and the shelf, and usually not because the idea was bad.
TOME exists because there is a wide gap between traditional publishing, which takes on almost nothing, and self-publishing, which takes on anything and leaves the author to work out the rest alone.
Authors in that gap are not short of ambition. They are short of an editor who will argue with them, a designer who understands that a cover is a sales tool rather than a decoration, and someone to say plainly which parts of the book are not working yet.
That is the whole business. We are not trying to be large.
- Titles in print
- Authors on the list
- Books taken on a year
- Business days to a reply
What we believe
The author keeps the book
You keep your rights. You keep your files. You keep the final word on every editorial change. We are working on your book, which is a different relationship from owning it.
Honest reads
If a manuscript is not ready, we say so, and we say why. If we are not the right publisher for it, we say that too. An enthusiastic yes from someone who says yes to everyone is worth nothing.
Craft over speed
A book that takes fourteen months and lasts twenty years is a better outcome than one that takes eight weeks and is remaindered in eighteen months. We are not the fast option.