Submissions
We are hugely interested in seeing your work; it’s our lifeblood. But we only publish certain types of books so please read on and look at our website carefully before sending. It’s also important that if you submit something, it’s fairly short and quick to understand.
We started out making photography books just about east London but have now branched out to cover many more topics around the globe. We are interested in:
- The city in general (i.e. urban stories from London and beyond)
- Nature. Particularly where nature meets the city
- Architecture. Particularly urban architecture
- Social history (and stories of community)
- Books about people (we love books with stories and personality)
- Humour in general (but not too crass – quirk with thought)
- Food (it must be unusual) with (the potential for) great photography
- Art and design in general
- Anything that is totally mind-blowing that we haven't thought of and has really nice pictures with it. Yes, please
We are obsessed by high quality imagery. If your pitch doesn’t already include brilliant photography, you should have a strong idea of what images will bring it to life.
Remember, we have to be able to sell the book, so unless the project has some appeal to a wider audience (through subject matter, quirk or pure emotional force), it won't work for us.
2) For photography proposals, attach a PDF of 10-20 images (compressed under 8MB) or send us a link to a website (only if you are happy it represents a clear edit of your work). In your email tell us what your project is about in less than 30 words. We’re not dumbing down; we are in the business of making art photography accessible to a wider audience. If you can’t explain your work succinctly (however niche it is) then we probably can’t convey it persuasively to a group of non-photography specialists browsing in a shop.
3) For other proposals, please send us a paragraph describing the concept (with a brief suggested contents and sample chapter if you like) and images to go with it (or an idea of images).
4) DO NOT SUBMIT A WETRANSFER LINK (they die after a while)
How long will it take to hear back?
We get a lot of emails and are a small team so it may take over a month to get back to you with a firm answer. If you still haven’t heard back after SIX weeks, please write again, but do bear with us – your submission is important to us. We aren’t perfect on emails, but we do our best.
A note on finances.
Wherever we can, we offer royalties on all submitted titles as it’s our aim to support our authors and photographers as much as we are able.
But occasionally we will not be able to do a photography book without asking for some financial support – it may be because the project is wonderful but doesn’t have a big commercial appeal. If so, we try and keep the support as low as possible (and certainly lower than many other photography publishers). This is a change in policy from when we started and when we tried to do all our titles without financial backing, but we soon found that some books, which we thought worthy of publication, could not pay for themselves. Unfortunately, this is a reality of the market.
On being or not being accepted
If we like your work, we’ll be in touch! But, remember, if we don’t accept your work it’s not because it’s bad; it’s because it doesn’t fit with our brand and tone. Being an artist requires a soft heart and thick skin, a rare combination, so we are very sorry if we have to turn you down. We ourselves have had our own work repeatedly rejected from other publishers – hey, maybe that’s why we publish.