Our promise
Your book should still be yours.
Paying for professional publishing support should not mean losing control of the work, the accounts or the audience you built around it.
Do authors keep their copyright with Quill & Reed?
Under Quill & Reed’s standard publishing-service model, the author retains copyright. Quill & Reed is paid to provide publishing and related services rather than acquiring ownership of the manuscript.
The five promises
Your book. Your copyright. Your royalties. Your accounts. Your audience.
- Your book
- You remain the owner of the manuscript you created.
- Your copyright
- Under Quill & Reed’s standard publishing-service model, we do not need to take your copyright to provide the service.
- Your royalties
- Quill & Reed does not take a standard percentage of your book royalties. Platform payments flow through the author’s own publishing accounts.
- Your accounts
- Your KDP and IngramSpark accounts remain under your control.
- Your audience
- Your mailing list, domain, content and reader relationships remain yours, subject to normal third-party platform terms and data-protection obligations.
No pretence
We will not pretend you have been “selected” just because you can pay.
Quill & Reed is a paid publishing service. We will not dress that up as a traditional publisher acquiring your book.
That also means being honest when a manuscript is not ready. Some manuscripts need substantial further work before we would recommend publishing, and we will say so.
Distribution
Distribution is not shelf space.
We can help make a book available through appropriate distribution channels, so bookshops, libraries and retailers are able to order it.
We cannot make Waterstones, independent bookshops, libraries or any other retailer physically stock it. Anyone who implies otherwise should be asked to put it in writing.
Outcomes
No one can honestly guarantee book sales.
What we can do is improve the things that make sales more likely. The outcome still depends on the book, its readers, the market and time.
- Production quality
- Discoverability infrastructure
- Marketing activity
- Audience communication
Restraint
If you do not need it, we should not sell it.
- Already have strong professional editing?
- Use it. We will not duplicate it.
- Already have an excellent cover?
- We will review it against production requirements rather than automatically replace it.
- Already own an appropriate domain?
- Use it.
- Already have your own illustrator?
- We can work with them, provided the files meet print requirements.
Costs
Extra costs are clear, and never automatic
Some work sits outside the standard packages because it varies so much from book to book. It is quoted separately where relevant, and nothing is commissioned without your approval.
- Editing
- Illustration
- Advertising spend
- Complex specialist work
Technology
Honest about AI
Quill & Reed may use AI-assisted systems internally to support its work. When we do, these are our commitments.
- Public AI-assisted tools are clearly disclosed
- AI diagnostics are never described as professional human editing
- Generated analysis is not presented as unquestionable truth
- Human quality control is kept where it matters
Files
Your production files
Authors should receive the appropriate final approved production assets for their book, such as print-ready and ebook files. The exact files, and any usage terms for commissioned artwork, will be set out in the relevant agreement.
If you leave
Leaving should not mean losing your author infrastructure.
Our model is designed so that ending an ongoing service does not mean surrendering the things you need to keep publishing.
- Copyright
- Publishing accounts
- Domain
- Mailing list
- Reader data
Final terms depend on the applicable agreements and the third-party services involved.