Publishing questions, answered properly

You send the manuscript or a sample and tell us what worries you about it. An editor reads it, usually within a week, and writes back about what the book needs. Then you get a written scope with stages, dates and one itemised price. All of that is free and none of it obliges you to proceed.

Yes — a short agreement plus your project scope. It covers the stages, the deliverables, the dates, the price and the payment points, and it states plainly that copyright and all rights remain yours. It does not contain exclusivity, a royalty share, or any claim over your future books. We will send it before you pay anything.

Work is invoiced by stage as each one begins, not in full up front, which spreads the cost over four to six months naturally. Invoices are payable in 14 days. If you need a longer arrangement, ask — we would rather set something workable than lose a book over timing.

Tell us early and we will do it again properly, which is the first remedy and usually the one authors want. If an edit was not performed with due care, a different editor redoes it at no cost. If something cannot reasonably be fixed, we refund the fee for that stage. Your consumer guarantees under Australian law sit above anything in our terms.

Yes, though the site is built for Australian authors and our administrative knowledge is Australian: ISBNs, legal deposit, local print on demand, AUD pricing and GST. If you are overseas we will say honestly where a local provider would serve you better, particularly on distribution and legal deposit.

More than most authors expect, and that is a feature. You approve each stage, you do the rewriting between the two editing passes, you choose a cover direction and you read the printed proof. Expect a handful of hours a fortnight during an active stage. Nothing is published without your written approval.

We decline manuscripts that need rewriting rather than editing, marketing for books that are not ready, audiobooks where the money would be better spent on the edit, and anything where we would have to promise a result. We also decline work outside what our editors and designers actually know, rather than learning on your project.

You do, including the source files — the working typeset file, the layered cover artwork, the illustration files. We hand them over, because a correction in two years should not mean paying to rebuild the book. Typeface licences stay with the foundry, which is the one thing nobody can transfer.

Yes, at any stage, and you will not be argued with. Work is invoiced by stage, so you pay for what is done, take the files and go. Some authors use us for the edit and publish themselves afterwards, which is a perfectly good outcome and not a failure of the relationship.