About
An independent house that does the whole job
We started in 2011 with one imprint and a conviction that authors were being handed a printed book and left to find readers by themselves. Five imprints and six divisions later, that is still the thing we are organised against.
Why the divisions are under one roof
A book normally passes through four companies that have never spoken to each other: a publisher, a freelance publicist, a review service and, if the author is lucky, an agent who arrived too late to shape the deal. Each is paid separately, each holds a different version of the truth about the book, and the author spends the year translating between them.
Everything here reads the same file. The publicist has met the editor. The person running your review drive has read the manuscript rather than the jacket copy. When a publication date moves, it moves in one place and every campaign built on it moves with it.
That is the whole argument, and it is worth saying plainly that it is an argument about coordination rather than about talent. There are superb freelance editors and publicists, and some of them are ours. What a house can do that a chain of contractors cannot is notice, in week nine, that the cover is fighting the positioning — and fix both before either has been printed.
What we will not do
The list is short and we hold to it
Most of what makes a publishing house trustworthy is what it declines, and none of these are negotiable for a large enough invoice.
- We do not charge a reading fee, and never will.
- We do not buy reviews, from services or from farms.
- We do not sell a launch to a book that is not ready for one.
- We do not represent a manuscript we cannot place — we name someone who can.
- We do not take rights we have no plan to exploit.
- We do not quote a range and firm it up after you have committed.
The divisions
Six of them, doing one job each
- PublishingLighthouse Press
- Traditional trade publishing across five imprints, with global distribution. We take three percent of what we are sent, and we pay the author rather than the other way round.
- MarketingLighthouse Amplify
- Full-stack book promotion: launch campaigns, social, trailers, influencer seeding and paid media. Run for our own titles and, increasingly, for books published elsewhere.
- Literary representationThe Beacon Agency
- We pitch to the major houses — in Delhi, London and New York — and negotiate the deal when one bites. Fifteen percent, only on what we sell. Never a reading fee.
- ReviewsRead & Reckon
- A verified review programme: real readers, matched to the book, who confirm the purchase before they post. Slower than the alternative and the only kind worth having.
- Events & fairsLighthouse Evenings
- Launches, festival stands and our own reading series in three cities. Author stalls at the major fairs start at ₹99 — the point is that a first-time author can afford to stand at one.
- Author growthThe Author Studio
- What happens between books: platform, newsletter, speaking, the second contract. Most authors are handed none of this and are then asked why book two sold less.
Send us the book
The whole manuscript, a synopsis, and a line about who it is for. A commissioning editor reads all of it, and everyone gets a reply.