Publish With Us
Hartzer Press publishes other people’s books, not only its founder’s. If you work in one of our subjects and have a book in you, we would like to see the proposal.
The subjects we publish
- AI and search — How discovery works now: AI search, answer engines, large language models, and what it takes to be found and cited by any of them.
- Technical SEO — Crawling, indexation, site architecture, canonicalization, structured data, rendering, Core Web Vitals, and log file analysis.
- Website development — Building, migrating, and maintaining sites that hold up — architecture, performance, accessibility, and the infrastructure underneath them.
- Domain names and DNS — Domain strategy, valuation, portfolio management, DNS, registrar and registry practice, domain security, and domain recovery.
- Digital marketing — Paid and organic acquisition, campaign architecture, analytics, attribution, and the measurement that decides what actually worked.
- Reputation and risk — How organizations and individuals are judged online, what the record actually says about them, and what can be done about it.
If your subject sits between two of these, that is usually a good sign rather than a problem. Most of the useful books in this field are written across a boundary.
Who we publish
Practitioners. Consultants, engineers, in-house specialists, agency leads, analysts, and expert witnesses — people who write from engagements, migrations, audits, investigations, and campaigns they ran themselves.
An audience helps, and we will ask about it. It matters less than whether you have actually done the thing. A first-time author with ten years of real engagements is a better prospect for this list than a well-followed commentator without them.
What we are looking for
- A method, not a survey. A reader should finish a chapter able to do something they could not do before.
- Evidence. Named cases, real data, actual screenshots, reproducible steps. If a claim is contested, say so and show why you land where you do.
- A reader you can describe. Who has this problem, what decision are they facing, and what happens to them if they get it wrong.
- A reason it is a book. Subjects deep enough to need a structure. If the whole thing fits in a long blog post, it should be a long blog post.
- Shelf life. Interfaces change; principles and methods last. We would rather publish the part that is still true in five years.
What we do not publish
- Memoir, business inspiration, and leadership advice without technical substance
- Archives of existing blog posts assembled into chapters
- Manuscripts generated by an AI system, or substantially drafted by one. Using AI as a research or editing tool is fine and normal; we will ask you to tell us how you used it.
- Books whose real purpose is to sell a service, where the method is withheld so the reader has to hire someone
- Fiction, and anything outside our subjects
What Hartzer Press provides
- ISBNs registered to the imprint — a separate one for each format, so your book is catalogued as a Hartzer Press title in Books In Print and library systems rather than as a self-published one.
- Editorial — developmental read, line edit, copy edit, and proofread.
- Design and production — cover, interior typesetting, and ebook conversion.
- Four editions — paperback, hardcover, ebook, and audiobook, subject to what the book warrants.
- Distribution — Ingram for the trade, which reaches Barnes & Noble, independent bookstores, libraries, schools, and international wholesalers; Amazon served directly.
- Metadata done properly — correct BISAC subject codes, consistent title and contributor data across every channel, and retail listings that match.
- Launch support — press materials, review copies to journalists and podcasters, and a dedicated website for the book where the title warrants one.
How to submit a proposal
Send a proposal, not a finished manuscript. A proposal is faster for you to write and faster for us to answer, and if the structure is wrong it is much cheaper to find out at the outline stage.
Include:
- One page on the book — what it is, who it is for, and what a reader can do after reading it that they could not do before.
- A chapter outline — every chapter, with two or three lines on each.
- One sample chapter — not the introduction. Pick the chapter that best shows how you explain a hard thing.
- About you — what you have done in this field, and how a reader would already know your work if they did.
- Comparable titles — two or three books that share your reader, and what yours does that they do not.
- Where it stands — how much is written, and a realistic delivery date.
Email it to [email protected] as a single PDF or Word file. Put the working title in the subject line.
What happens next. We acknowledge every proposal within five business days. If it fits the list we will come back with questions and our standard terms within about three weeks. If it does not, we will tell you plainly and, where we can, say why — a decline from us is a decline, not a silence.
Questions from authors
Do you charge authors to publish?
No. Hartzer Press is a publisher, not a vanity press and not a self-publishing service. We pay production costs and we do not ask authors to buy copies, fund a print run, or pay a reading, setup, or marketing fee. If any publisher asks you for money to publish your book, that is the moment to walk away.
What are the terms?
Rights, royalty rates, territory, and term are set in a written agreement for each title. We send our standard terms with our response to a proposal, before you invest any more time — you should never have to guess at the deal while you are still deciding whether to write the thing.
Do I need a finished manuscript first?
No, and we would rather you did not have one. A proposal with a solid outline and one strong sample chapter tells us more than a complete draft, and it means the structural conversation happens before you have written 80,000 words in the wrong shape.
Do I need a literary agent?
No. We read proposals sent directly by authors. If you have an agent, we are happy to work with them.
Can I keep publishing on my own site and newsletter?
Yes, and we would encourage it. What we need is that the book itself is new work, not a repackaged archive, and that a substantial part of it is not already available free in the same form.
How long does publication take?
For a delivered, edited manuscript, roughly six to nine months to print and ebook publication, depending on the schedule and the editorial work needed. Audiobook usually follows the print edition.
I have an idea but not an outline. Should I still write?
Yes. Send a paragraph describing the book and the reader. If it is anywhere near the list we will tell you what a full proposal would need to cover.