G.Grandthe house and its workPublishers of new writing

A publisher for the books
that were never going to be taken.

Grand Publishers is a publishing house working in the United Kingdom and the United States. We take on a small number of manuscripts, make them into books to a standard that holds up on any shelf, and put them into the shops and catalogues that sell books.

Editorial, cover design, typesetting, ISBN registration, print and distribution, and the marketing that comes after. Every book below was made here, and every one of them can be opened and followed through to the shop it sells in.

A hand holding a red editorial pencil over a desk, an old typewriter beside it.
What we are

Traditional publishing takes a vanishingly small number of the manuscripts it is sent. That is not a judgement on the rest of them.

Most books that deserve to exist will never be commissioned by a house that pays advances, because the economics of an advance require an audience that can be predicted before the book is written. A memoir written for a family, a trade manual written by the person who actually knows the trade, a children's book written for one particular child — none of them fit that model, and all of them are worth making well.

How a book gets taken on

Grand is a hybrid publishing house. A traditional house pays an advance because it is betting on sales it thinks it can predict, and it therefore takes very few books. We are not making that bet, so we can take on work that would never survive that test — and we invest alongside the author rather than in place of them. What that buys is a book made to the same standard either way.

Everything after the decision runs exactly as a commissioning house runs it. A manuscript is read before anything is quoted. It is edited by a named editor, designed, typeset, registered under a publisher's imprint with proper bibliographic metadata, and distributed into the book trade rather than listed on one retailer and left there. The commercial terms for your title are set out in the written proposal, in figures, before you commit to anything.

Three questions are worth asking of any publisher, including this one. Does it read manuscripts and turn some of them down. Does the author keep the copyright. Is the book distributed into the trade so a shop or a library can order it in. Ours are answered on the rights page in the same words we would use on a call.

How a book gets made here

Five stages,
each with a page.

A process you can only hear about on a sales call is a process nobody can compare. Every stage below is written up in full, including what it does not do.

One — Assessment
A publisher reads the manuscript and gives you one of three answers: proceed, revise and come back, or we are the wrong house for this. It costs nothing and there is nothing to sign.
Two — Editorial
Developmental, line, copy and proofreading, in that order, by a named editor who has read the whole book. Every change is visible and every change is yours to refuse.
Three — Design and production
Cover, typesetting, trim size, paper and binding, decided for the book rather than defaulted. Print-ready files, and the artwork is yours.
Four — Publishing and distribution
ISBN registration, bibliographic metadata, retail listing, and distribution into the trade so a shop or a library can order it in for somebody who asks.
Five — Launch and discovery
What happens after publication: launch planning around your own audience, listing upkeep after real data arrives, and a record of what was actually done.
The editorial standard

What we
look for.

Before we recommend a next step we look closely at the work, the author's intention and the kind of publishing relationship that would serve both.

Readiness

Is the work at a stage where editorial attention will improve it, or does it need another draft first?

Voice

Is somebody speaking on the page? This is the one thing that cannot be added afterwards.

Ambition

What is the book trying to make possible, and for whom?

Fit

Can Grand genuinely be the right publisher for this manuscript? Sometimes the useful answer is no.

The list

What holds it together
is not a genre.

Memoir, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, faith writing and children's books. What the list has in common is the standard the object is made to. Open any of these and follow it through to the shop it is sold in.

Bipolar SunsetDavid Summerville

The group

Three properties,
one company.

A publisher, an imprint for children, and a bookshop. They exist separately because they serve different people, and they are worth understanding separately if you are deciding whether to publish here.

Grand Publishers

The house.

This website, and the publishing business itself. Assessment, editorial, design, production, ISBN registration and distribution, plus the marketing services listed further down. Everything that turns a manuscript into a book somebody can order.

grandpublishers.co.uk in the United Kingdom, grandpublishers.com in the United States. Same house, same list, local number.

Grand Kidz

The children’s imprint.

Illustrated books for children, published under their own imprint with their own site and their own shelf. A children’s book is a made object rather than a manuscript: illustration is most of the cost, the page turn is the punchline, and page counts come in multiples of eight because of how sheets are folded. It is a different craft, so it has a different name.

grand-kidz.com · How children’s publishing works here

Grand Reads

The bookshop.

Our own online bookshop, selling to readers rather than to authors. Readers browse by genre, follow an Author of the Month, keep a wishlist and buy at a discount to list price. It is a shop, run as a shop.

It matters to an author for a reason that is easy to miss. Every other place your book is sold belongs to somebody else, and their listing, their pricing and their promotion are their decisions. Grand Reads is a shop we run, which means our authors have a shopfront that is not rented — a place we can feature a title, put a face to it, and send readers to on purpose.

grandreads.com

After publication

Publishing puts the book
in the world. This finds it readers.

Two different jobs, and most authors are left alone for the second one. Every service below is separate, has its own page, and can be bought without the others.

Author websites
The one piece of the platform you own outright. Ours run live inside the marketing page — open one and scroll it.
Press releases
Written, distributed and permanently on the record, with real mastheads and real pieces behind them.
Book trailers
One shoot, four cuts, every file yours. The only format a feed shows to strangers.
Amazon A+ content
The part of the listing below the description, where an undecided reader makes up their mind.
Author Central
The profile that joins your books to each other, and the follow button that tells readers about the next one.
Goodreads
Where readers decide what to read next, whether or not the author turns up.
Articles and blogs
Published writing under your name, so a search for you finds more than a shop.
Substack and newsletters
An audience you can export and take with you. The list is yours from the first day.
Advance copies and reviews
Copies to readers who choose whether to review. Nobody is paid, and that is what keeps a book on sale.
The work, running

Not screenshots.
The actual sites.

Author websites we built, live inside this page. Click one and scroll it like any other site. Every domain is registered in the author’s own name and every mailing list sits in their account, not ours.

The Rooted Soul
The Rooted SoulAlan McDonaldVisit ↗
In My Happy Place
In My Happy PlaceVernon SmithVisit ↗
Little Hedgehog and the Moon
Little Hedgehog and the MoonCatherine RushtonVisit ↗
Helen for English
Helen for EnglishHelen MichaelVisit ↗
James O'DonnellOpens in a new tab
James O'DonnellAuthor siteVisit ↗
Paul Okonweze
Paul OkonwezeAuthor siteVisit ↗
Geoffrey Spinks
Geoffrey SpinksAuthor siteVisit ↗
Louise Wynne Jones
Louise Wynne JonesAuthor siteVisit ↗
Mark Short
Mark ShortChildren's fantasyVisit ↗
Bloodplay
BloodplayEra K NestaVisit ↗
Bert the Worm's Garden
Bert the Worm's GardenA playable garden board, built into the book's own siteVisit ↗
World Wheel
World WheelVijali Hamilton — scroll the map to travel the workVisit ↗
Melissa Boyer
Melissa BoyerScroll below to explore the pondVisit ↗
Without taking our word for it

Four ways to check
everything on this site.

A publisher asking an author for money should expect to be checked. These are the four we would use on us.

The books, in the shops
Open any title in the catalogue and follow it through to where it is sold. Most of them link straight to the retail listing, with the ISBN printed on the page so you can search it yourself.
The reviews, on platforms we do not own
Trustpilot and five other independent sites, listed below with their real counts. We cannot edit any of them, which is exactly what makes them worth reading.
The press, with the mastheads
Pieces about our authors on the BBC, in The Yorkshire Post, the Irish Daily Mail and elsewhere. Every mark in the banner on this site links to the actual article rather than to a summary of it.
The company, on the register
Grand Publishers is the trading name of GRAND GROUP LTD, company number 11956597, registered in England and Wales. That is a public record and it takes about ten seconds to look up.
Reviews

What our authors say
when we are not in the room.

Every review below sits on a platform we do not own and cannot edit. Follow any score through and read the whole list — not the part we would have chosen.

See all our reviews on Trustpilot

Trustpilot is not the only place. Our authors have left reviews on every one of these, and we cannot edit a word on any of them.

Straight answers

What you are told,
and when.

Every one of these is a question an author asks in the first ten minutes. Here is the answer we give on a call, written down.

“How will it sell?”
You are told exactly what gets made, what it costs and when it is finished, in writing, before anything starts. Sales are the one thing nobody in publishing can know in advance, so we deal in the parts that can be committed to and then we hold to them.
“Will it be in bookshops?”
It will be orderable by every one of them, and by libraries, which is the part a publisher can actually deliver: an ISBN registered to a publisher and a record in the trade catalogues. Whether a particular shop puts copies on a table is that shop’s own buying decision.
“What does a press release get me?”
A piece written properly, distributed to the desks that cover your subject, and a permanent, linkable record with a date on it. Sometimes a journalist picks it up — Vernon Smith reached the BBC and The Yorkshire Post — and those pieces are linked from this site, so you can see the difference between what happens every time and what happened once.
“How do I get reviews?”
From readers, through advance copies sent to people who read your genre and choose whether to write anything. Nobody is paid, and that is the detail that keeps a book on sale rather than getting the listing pulled.
“Will you take my book?”
A publisher reads it first and gives you one of three answers: proceed, come back after another draft, or we are the wrong house for this. The read costs nothing, and an author who publishes too early does not come back and does not recommend us.
The people behind the books

Coming to
this page.

Names, roles and photographs of the people who actually do the editing, designing and producing. We would rather this page were empty for a fortnight than filled with stock photographs of people who do not work here.

The author’s position

The book enters the world.
It never stops being yours.

Copyright stays with you and is never assigned to us. Nothing changes without you seeing it first, and nothing goes to print you have not talked through — the cover, the title and the text. The scope, the territory and the term of what you licence us are stated in the agreement, along with how it ends and what comes back to you when it does. All of that is written down rather than said on a call, and it is set out in full on the rights page.

The company

Who you would
be dealing with.

Two offices, two numbers, one company. Both lines are answered by a person during working hours.

Legal entity
GRAND GROUP LTD, company number 11956597, registered in England and Wales. Grand Publishers, Grand Kidz and Grand Reads are its trading names.
United Kingdom
20 Nithsdale Road, Glasgow G41 2AN
+44 20 4600 5244 · Monday to Friday, 9am–5pm
United States
1760 N Ridge Rd, Apt 7103, McKinney, Texas 75071, United States
+1 (949) 356-6662 · Monday to Friday, 9am–5pm
Email
info@grandpublishers.co.uk
Manuscripts are read in confidence and are never shared, published or used for anything else.
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