About Us

In a stunning surprise, we are a rather small publisher born out of the angst of trying to figure out how to deal with literary agents and constantly closed off publishing companies. The industry is just so inflated and convoluted that it seems impossible to break into it. 

You have to send your manuscript in to 400 agents in hopes that 1 of them will like you, then you have to hope that they have an in with a publisher so that you can get your book published. After it is published your agent and you publisher take a cut of your sales, usually leaving you somewhere between 30 and 50% of the actual profit, much of which will likely need to go to your editor to pay off whatever they charged. This doesn't even take in to account Amazon's publishing practices, which are aggressive to say the least. Last of all, you almost always end up signing away your IP in your contract.

This is where we come in. We do not require agents, and we do not require your IP rights. There is no upfront cost to you, and we don't require you to have your manuscript pre-edited (though that does make our job easier). Our goal is to make an alternative to both self-publishing (which can be incredibly stressful) and the usual pathway (which is confusing and will end up taking advantage of new authors). 

What we we offer is a full service publishing service. We have our own in-house editors, artists, and sales team, making us a proper publisher, but without the restrictions of the Big 5 or price gouging of Amazon's KDP. There is no upfront cost to you (a basic of being a proper publisher).

How this works is you fill out our form on the submissions page, our editors review your manuscript, then we propose a contract to you based on how much work they think it'll take to make a polished piece. Next, we haggle. You say something like "I think you're asking for too much of my profits," and we say "But look at all these spelling and grammar mistakes we're going to have to fix." 

If we cannot come to solution that makes us both happy, then you walk, at no cost at all. You've spent no money, and you've gotten some very good feedback on your manuscript. If a contract is signed then our editors give it the full works. How long this takes will depend mostly on three factors. 1) How polished is the work you originally submitted. 2) How quick are you at responding to emailed suggested edits. 3) How long is you work? A good estimate is that about 10,000 words can be properly edited a month. If you are submitting a children's book that needs illustrations, expect about 1 illustration a week.

During this time our art team will work with you on designing cover art and any illustrations you need. We may use AI to speed up this process, but the final work is always a genuine human creation. The same can be said for word editing. AI is used for the basic stuff like spelling checks, but the final work submitted to you is always a human creation. Working this way allows us to speed things along so we can dedicate more time and resources to creating a good end product. Don't worry, we respect your work and would not demean its value by relying on AI to do things that should be done by a human.

After everything is finalized then your work gets published. Our distribution system utilizes Lightning Source. This allows retailers to purchase only the books they need, cutting wasted money and reducing the chances that we'll need to buy-back unsold books. It is best if people purchase from this website, as we retain the most control over the inventory, but that is an unrealistic expectation. 

We will provide some advertising, and if your books sells well we'll provide more. Because you retain the IP for your book this allows you to use other advertisers as well. We will not cover the cost of you doing so. Any advertiser you use other than us will come out of your own pocket. 

If you have plans to sell a series then details will be worked out in our contract. 

We're trying to bring balance and fairness back to publishing, a problem only made worse with the advent of AI. The industry has been stifled and small publishers have been pushed or bought out. Its a big task and we'd be grateful if you chose to publish with us.  

We are currently working on expanding our imprints. We have plans for Science and Philosophy Journals, as well as to differentiate our Turtle-Bear brand into 1) Children, 2) Teen, 3) YA, 4) Adult, 5) Historical, 6) Non-Fiction, and 7) Fiction imprints. 

Pleas feel free to submit any work that fits into any of these categories.