The chances are that you have been submitting your manuscript to publishers and/or agents for a while now and it has been sent back to you - sometimes with alarming speed, other times it lands back on your doorstep many, many months later. Either with way, you are not confident that it has been considered for publication.

Mainstream publishers reject the bulk of manuscripts sent to them principally because they predict that they will not be able to sell the books in sufficient quantities to cover production and distribution costs. Most publishers and agents report that they receive hundreds of new submissions a week, and they probably don't give all of them a fair chance however it is misleading to say that they routinely reject books from first-time authors out of hand, however good. Some are good but lack that certain elusive something which publishers are always on the look-out for; some are badly written and are unmarketable because they are unreadable, and many are simply very specialised and would only appeal to a small readership.

PenPress provide Reader's Reports as we believe that every book deserves a chance - at least to be considered - and this is our startpoint. Whilst we don't publish every manuscript that comes to us, we will give it a fair consideration and make recommendations based on our assessment. We will give an honest assessment of literary merit and an informed opinion of your book's potential marketability, whatever its genre. We make a small charge for reading your book and provide you with an individually prepared Reader's Report. You can rest assured that your book has genuinely been read, assessed and evaluated.

Reader's reports cost £35 for every 30,000 words.

Reader's Reports prove to be invaluable either to authors who simply want to get an idea about the quality of their work prior to approaching a mainstream publisher, or as a prelude to reworking their manuscript for submission for self-financed publishing. In turn, we use the Reader's Report to quote you for producing your book. We cannot quote you a price for producing your book without understanding the likely page count, the final format and structure, and the degree of editing required.

Editing a manuscript can be a time-consuming and costly business, and some books need more than others. We have an independent team of editors who work under contract with us, and manuscripts are sent to the appropriate editor for its subject matter. The scale of charges varies depending on the degree of editing required, and we have three alternative service levels to suit the degree of editing required.

Submission Form

You can either download a pdf version of the submission form, or phone us to obtain a copy of our literature and a form (0845 1080530). If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask as we are happy to chat about our services, and in fact about the book industry generally.

Simply fill out the form and return it to us with your manuscript and reading fee so that we may undertake an initial reading to ascertain the work needed on your book and issue a quote for publication costs. This is a no obligation submission and does not commit you or us to entering into a publishing agreement.

We will submit our Reader's Report within an agreed time-frame (usually allow 3-4 weeks for our readers to do a thorough reading and report), together with a quotation for publication to a pre-agreed number of copies. If you wish to proceed, we will prepare a contract which you should read thoroughly. This is a standard industry contract, but is open to negotiation.

Pen Press will then schedule in the production of your book which includes copy and/or more extensive editing; production of proofs; illustrations/diagrams; cover design; back-cover 'blurb' writing: printing and binding. At every stage you will be sent text and designs for your approval before progressing to the next stage towards realising your published book. The production phase ends upon receipt of Review Copies of your book and full legal registrations. This is generally a six month time frame, depending on how accurately our authors return material to us to stay within the scheduled time line.

We then commence our Launch Phase and our section on marketing will explain how we can go on to promote and market your book in association with our various distributor and rights partners.

Securing extraction rights for New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Davies, Rebel Royals, at the London Book Fair


Pen Press wins the Juice FM charity auction and gets dinner cooked by DJs Sam Walker and Holly Johnston. Pen Press raise £630.00 for charity.