About Us

Traditional Publishing Options Explained

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 Updates are in progress . . . please check back soon.

Welcome Authors   
To our guides to publishing your books - from the standard avenues to self-publishing.

There is no shame in self-publishing. Many great authors have self-published, from Benjamin Franklin to Stephen King. See John Kremer's Self-Publishing Hall of Fame: http://www.SelfPublishing HallOfFame.com

A few self-published authors:
Margaret Atwood, William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Willa Cather (Pulitzer Prize winner), Deepak Chopra, Pat Conroy, E.E. Cummings, William E.B. Du Bois, Alexandre Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Edward Fitzgerald, Judith Galbraith, Galileo Galilei, Zane Grey, John Grisham, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hugh Hefner, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, Rod McKuen, Herman Melville, Richard Nixon, Thoman Paine, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoi, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.

And these were not just novels, and poetry, but many informative books, sometimes offered to a smaller audience, maybe a "how to" book, sometimes with groundbreaking information, and often timely insights not suited to the larger, slower, standard publishers. Many of these successful books have been picked up by standard publishers later, such as:
Arlene Eisenberg (What to do When You're Expecting)
William Strunk (The Elements of Style)
Robert B. Thomas (Old Farmer's Almanac 1972 - still sells millions each year)

Pathways to Publishing Flow Chart	Pathways to Publishing Guides
Subsidy (Self) Publishers Compared (Coming Soon)	Links for more information (Coming Soon)
Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter	Who we are & What we do Touchstone Communications:     Touchstone Consulting:          Book Publishing Guide          Book Project Manager     Touchstone Graphics:          Cover Design/Book Setup          Promotional Materials          Web Site Hosting & Design     Touchstone Press

Why are we offering this free?
•  To help you get started, clearly understand your options, and directions you can go for successful publication. This information is FREE, and we'd appreciate any suggestions for additions or corrections.

•  To prevent authors from getting "ripped off" by unscrupulous subsidy publishers. If you understand how they work, and have an opporutnity to compare their services, you'll be much better able to make an informed choice; and get what you are paying for. They are not all bad, nor a bad choice. But it is bad to "buy in" to a package without some background to these companies. Our chart can give you a good beginning to understanding and locating the services you want for your book project.

(A comparison chart of subsidy publishers is in process - it will be up on our web site very soon!)

•  If you purchase our eBook Guides or printed Booklet Guides, or choose to have us work with you on your project, then we'll make some money. But you don't have to buy anything to access the FREE information here.

(NOTE: Some of our eBooks have been pulled out for updating. They'll be back on the web site soon. Bookmark us and check back.)

•  We are already doing fine, consulting with authors to work through the steps publishing their work. See some of the books we've worked on. We charge for each job - by the hour, or by the job. So the book profit is yours!

•  All we ask is that you let us know if there is any way we can make this site more "user friendly" or add any information you are interested to see. Share with us  any information which would make this site better. We will continually update our booklets making this site the BEST it can be.         THANKS for visiting us here! (Bookmark us)

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Touchstone Consulting
Support and Guidance through the paths of publishing. Understand all the ways you could find an agent or publisher, or publish and reproduce your work yourself, for profit, to break even, or share for free. We also show how and where to list, market and sell - that part of the project often the least understood, but the most needed. The first 30 minutes is FREE, so you can decide if you'd like to continue. Email us with your questions.

Touchstone Graphics
Excellent cover design, attractive type layout, is so important, and it should be done well. It will reflect the quality of your writing. Web page design and setup also available. See examples of our work. And once you've chosen your printer, we can prepare your book to exactly their specifications, eliminating those costly problems and errors novice preparers often encounter. We prepare digital books as well.

Touchstone Press
With our 30 years of print/publishing experience, we locate for you several options to reproduce your books. Short run, long run, large and small, full color or black and white, soft or hard cover. We will get you FREE quotes from several production sources, and can show you their examples. YOU PICK your printing source, so you get the best option for you at the most reasonable price. See examples of some books we've worked on.