Welcome to Oakhill Press!
Publisher of Business and Self-Help Books
The Best of Both Worlds
Oakhill Press, a recognized mainstream publisher of business and self-help books, offers qualified authors a new book publishing model combining the best of traditional royalty publishing with the best of self-publishing. Oakhill represents a hybrid of these two publishing modalities that provides more authors a serious and professional publishing opportunity and experience with the support of a publisher, while allowing the author to have more involvement in the process and retaining most of their publishing rights.
Some attempt to characterize this hybrid approach to publishing as “vanity” or “subsidy” publishing. Others want to call it self-publishing. Neither is accurate. While it is true that our authors invest their own funds or secure the funds to have their books published, that is where the similarity ends.
Most publishing organizations who are recognized as vanity or subsidy publishers will publish virtually any manuscript from anyone with the funds to pay for the publishing expenses, regardless of topical category, literary value or market potential. Oakhill Press is both selective and discriminating with regard to the publishing projects that bear the Oakhill Press imprint. Similarly, books that carry the Oakhill Press imprint are quality literature, professionally edited and designed to the same standards as a major royalty publishing house. So, our books do not resemble a typical self-published book.
Oakhill Press primarily publishes books that are categorized by the publishing industry as business or self-help books. While we may review and even consider books that do not fall directly into these categories, unless there is some reasonable connection with these topical areas, Oakhill Press will not publish the work as an Oakhill Press imprint book.
You talk directly to the publisher when you approach Oakhill Press. There are no middlemen (literary agents) necessary. In some ways your book idea may be scrutinized more closely by Oakhill Press than by a traditional royalty publisher. Royalty publishers are more likely to simply reject book proposals and manuscripts without even speaking to an author. Most royalty publishers require authors to utilize the services of a literary agent to represent the author. Usually, this is the first level of screening for a book. Often, literary agents reject books and they never get to a publisher. Royalty publishers invest their own time, money and resources into book projects. Since they know that, statistically, more than 90% of all books actually published will be financially unsuccessful - they gamble on only a very small number of the books presented to them.
On the other end of the spectrum, authors who choose to self-publish their books are basically battling a giant industry on their own. The self-publisher can be characterized as one ant among thousands of tiny ants scrambling to survive in a world of bull elephants. It’s very difficult to be recognized and easy to be squashed by the elephants.
Oakhill Press, as a small, independent mainstream publisher with distribution channels into the trade bookstore and library markets, provides similar opportunities, when a book has market potential, to those provided by a larger royalty publisher. However, Oakhill Press pulls no punches with regard to being honest about your book and its potential for success. If an author’s book does not have trade book market appeal and potential, we’ll say so and consider other options before suggesting that an author make a very large investment and potentially end up with a large inventory of non-selling books! Our philosophy and goal is to have happy and successful authors. Thus, we won’t take money from anyone if there is, in our estimation, less than a reasonable chance for success.
The vast majority of books sold by Oakhill Press and its authors are not sold in the trade bookstore market. They are sold in the “back of the room” after a speech, seminar or workshop, to corporate and institutional accounts, as special sales, and other non-bookstore related sales. Thus, working closely with the author, we attempt to maximize his or her success with their publishing experience. Authors realize a full publishing service from a recognized publisher. The Oakhill publishing experience is much stronger than self-publishing and potentially more financially rewarding then a royalty arrangement. The author, retains the copyright and owns the press run of books. The author is more involved in the actual production of the book, as well.
If this new hybrid approach to publishing is of interest to you, let’s move forward. The next step is for you to contact Oakhill Press about your prospective book. After we’ve spoken, we may request that you send a manuscript or sample materials so we can evaluate and confirm the quality of your work to date. Literary quality and integrity is very important at Oakhill Press. We want every Oakhill Press book to have a fair and equitable chance for success in an extremely competitive market. And, since our name appears on every book, our reputation is also on the line.
If we agree to do business with each other, we’ll move more quickly than most publishers so that your book gets into the market with minimal delays. While most royalty publishers take as long as 12 to 18 months and even longer to publish your book, Oakhill Press can have your book complete in as little as three to six months from the time we receive a final manuscript. You’ll find us highly collaborative (you approve cover design, text design and layout, etc.) and customer-service responsive. Often, we can offer suggestions for alternative financing. It’s your move. Call today!