Commercial Publishing
Vantage Publishing offers low-cost bespoke publishing solutions for local businesses, charities and other organisations. Our menu of services can range from content and design through to printing and distribution and offer a flexible approach and a very cost-effective service designed to help you fulfil your print objectives.
We are skilled in the following areas:
- Sourcing exceptional editorial content
- Engaging design
- Image sourcing
- Social media promotion
- Distribution via Royal Mail
We can help you with the following:
- Brochures, magazines and programmes
- Leaflets and inserts
- Adverts
- Banners
- Books – biographies, novels, poetry, novels etc
- Illustrated books – photo books
Book Publishing
We can now also help private individuals with books they wish to self-publish and can help you create a book at any size. We can also print copies of the book for you, with prices dependent upon the size of the book, the format (paperback, hardback), the quality of the paper and the cover and the quantity required, which can be from 5 copies upwards.
Since we started this service in 2019, we have created over a dozen books, including a cookery book, a children’s picture story and several autobiographies. Please see below for more information.
Getting your book published
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
So goes what is considered a cliché for a badly written, overly melodramatic piece of prose. It was actually a real opening line, written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his 1830 novel ‘Paul Clifford’, and was much later used by Charles M. Schulz in the popular comic strip Peanuts, with the aspiring author Snoopy often portrayed typing ‘a dark and stormy night’.
Not all aspiring authors are this bad. In fact, most of them are very much better. But getting your book in print is a tricky business. The original way was to write a book, or at least part of one, and then send it on to a literary agent or directly to a publisher, although many publishers won’t accept manuscripts directly from writers. The agent would then try to find the right publisher for you. But even that isn’t easy. Famously, JK Rowling’s agent had the manuscript for Harry Potter rejected by 12 publishers before it was picked up by a fairly small publishing house called Bloomsbury.
Now of course there are several avenues for self-publishing and there are many companies that will offer different services, depending upon what you want. Most will charge you a fee to produce your book, allocate an ISBN (an International Standard Book Number enables you to sell the book commercially) and make it available to buy via print-on-demand or Kindle/e-book though Amazon and other book wholesalers for a year or more. You will usually get a few copies yourself, with the option to print-on-demand more copies should you wish and the typical fee is around £750.
If you have your book in a print-ready format, you can use Amazon’s own Kindle Direct Publishing service whereby you can upload your manuscript and cover for free and then go on to sell your book via Kindle or hardcopies on a print-on-demand basis. You choose the price (which you can change at any time) and then Amazon will give you up to 70% royalties on all copies sold.
But what if your manuscript is not in a print-ready format? What if you only want to print a few copies for friends and family?
This is where we can come in. Vantage Publishing is here to help you create your book at any size. We can typeset and layout the book, insert images, design a front and back cover and offer an ISBN and barcode should you want one. We will send you proofs at all stages for amendment until final approval. For this service, we charge a fee starting from just £150 plus VAT.
We can also then print copies of the book for you, with prices dependent upon the size of the book, the format (paperback, hardback), the quality of the paper and the cover and the quantity required, which can be from 5 copies upwards.
Since we started this service in 2019, we have created over a dozen books, including a cookery book, a children’s picture story and several autobiographies. If this service is of interest to you, please get in touch with us now!
Call Stefan Reynolds on 01483 416601 or email stefan@vantagepublishing.co.uk
Click here to view our brochure now!
For more information on how we can help you and your organisation, please contact:
Stefan Reynolds – email stefan@vantagepublishing.co.uk or call 01483 421601.
As part of our publishing mix, we have been commissioned to undertake bespoke projects on behalf of clients. These include biographies, children’s books, commemorative supplements, annual guides and inserts such as the following examples:
Mole Valley Arts Alive Festival
In 2018 and 2019, we produced the annual Mole Valley Arts Alive Festival brochure on behalf of the Festival committee and Mole Valley District Council. We created the design, layout, sourced the paper, and arranged the print and delivery.
Guildford Fringe Festival 2019
In 2019, we printed the Guildford Fringe Festival brochure for our friends at Guildford Fringe, as we were able to offer them a very competitive print quote due to our connections in the industry – as we have also done for other local clients.
Godalming Heritage Open Days 2019 and 2021
We designed, produced and printed the 2019 and 2021 Heritage Open Days brochure for the Godalming Trust, alongside publishing a feature in VantagePoint magazine a month before the weekend in September.
Sootina’s Story
This is a lovely book for young children, written by a local author for distribution to children in the Seychelles and is about the life of a seabird called a Sooty Tern, aimed at children aged 8-11 in Seychelles. We produced 2,000 copies of the book.
Farnham Town Council
In 2017 and 2018, we were commissioned by Farnham Town Council to produce an insert for the Farnham Food Festival. We created the artwork to their specification and inserted it into the September issue of VantagePoint in advance of the festival.
Tallulah: House rabbit
A lovely story written and illustrated by a local customer about a house rabbit and how she was affected when her owner’s boyfriend moved in during lockdown.
Donald’s Story and The Past is Another Country
We produced both these memoirs for a couple of local men who wanted a story of their lives available as a souvenir for their families.
Sunday Puddings in Lockdown
The author made puddings for and with her grandchildren in lockdown and we produced a book with these recipes for the family to cook.
Peaks & Troughs | John Ford: My Story
More local memoirs
Out of the Pepperpot
A fully illustrated personal history of Godalming by one of its former Mayors
An Eccentric CV | The Italian Connection
Yet more local memoirs
The Surrey Hills Superheroes
A children’s book based in the Surrey Hills