A publishing house that works for the author.
Penghouse exists because independent authors kept being offered two bad options: give up your rights, or figure out production alone. There is a third way, and it is simply doing the work properly and handing everything back.
We started this after watching too many good books get handled badly.
Our founders spent years inside trade publishing houses. The production standards there are excellent. The access is not — the vast majority of finished manuscripts never get read by anyone with the authority to say yes.
Meanwhile the assisted-publishing industry grew up to fill that gap, and a lot of it is predatory: ISBNs registered to the vendor, retail accounts the author cannot access, royalty shares buried in the contract, and production quality that would not survive a trade acquisitions meeting.
Penghouse is the boring answer to that. Trade-standard production, sold as a service, with every asset handed back to the person who wrote the book. No acquisitions committee, no gatekeeping, and no clever clauses.
Six things we commit to in writing.
These appear in every contract we sign. If another publishing service will not put the same six lines in theirs, that tells you something worth knowing.
Your copyright, always
We never take an ownership stake in your work, in any territory, in any format, for any length of time.
Your ISBN
Registered to you or to your own imprint. Never to us. This is the single clause that decides who controls a book.
Zero royalty share
Retailers pay you directly. We are paid for work delivered and take nothing from your sales, ever.
Your accounts
KDP, Ingram, Apple, your domain, your email platform — all created under your identity, logins handed over on day one.
Your source files
Layered cover artwork, InDesign files, audio masters. You leave with everything, not just exports.
Leave whenever
No exclusivity, no lock-in, no notice period. Cancel and you keep every asset produced up to that point.
Forty-odd specialists, not four generalists.
Nobody here does all of it. The developmental editor who reshapes your structure is not the copy editor who standardises your hyphenation, and neither of them designs your cover.
Our roster runs to roughly forty freelancers and staff: editors from trade houses, cover designers with genre specialisms, illustrators, typesetters, narrators, and a small in-house marketing team that has run book campaigns since 2019. You are matched to people whose actual body of work fits your book.
- Editors trained in trade publishing
- Designers with genre specialisms
- Illustrators shortlisted per project
- In-house ad management team
From first call to steady sales.
Consultation
A 30-minute call with a publishing advisor, not a salesperson. We work out what your book actually needs and, just as often, what it does not. You leave with a written scope whether or not you hire us.
Scope and quote
A fixed, itemised quote. You see the cost of every line, and you can remove any of them. No retainers, no surprise change orders halfway through.
Production
Writing, editing, design, and typesetting run against a published schedule with a named lead on your project. Weekly updates land whether or not there is news.
Publish
Accounts in your name, metadata researched rather than guessed, a physical proof checked before release, and every storefront verified after launch.
Grow
Ads, reviews, podcasts, and email. Weekly reporting on spend and copies sold, for as long as you want us running it.
How to spot a bad publishing deal.
Read these before you sign anything, with us or with anyone else.
They keep the ISBN in their own name.
Whoever holds the ISBN is recorded as the publisher of record. If it is not you, you cannot move the book, change the price, or fully control the listing without their cooperation. This is the most common trap in the industry and the easiest to check.
They charge fees and take a royalty percentage.
A traditional publisher takes a royalty share because they carry the production cost. A service company charges fees because you carry it. Doing both means being paid twice for one book.
They promise a bestseller ranking.
Nobody can promise this. A category ranking during launch week is sometimes achievable, and an honest partner will tell you whether your specific category makes that plausible before taking your money.
The contract has an exclusivity clause.
There is no operational reason a production service needs exclusivity over your distribution rights. The only purpose it serves is making it expensive for you to leave.
You cannot access your own retail accounts.
Ask directly: 'Will the KDP account be in my name, and will I have the password?' If the answer requires more than one sentence, that is your answer.
Bring us a book, and a lot of questions.
Thirty minutes with an advisor. Ask anything, including the uncomfortable ones on this page — we would rather answer them now.