We at Pen Press pride ourselves on being different. We offer our authors a transparent self publishing service for a reasonable price – something we believe we do better than any of our competitors. Based in sunny Brighton, UK, our dedicated team offer a friendly service, so you can publish with the knowledge that your book is in safe hands. We involve the author in all stages of production, so you get the book you want to publish. With over sixteen years' experience in publishing, we can advise and guide you both before and after publication, so your book is the best it can be.

Where it all began

Pen Press was founded by two friends who met whilst working temporarily in a London publishing house, which they soon discovered was a notorious vanity publisher charging upwards of £5,000 (in the early 1990s) for a shoddily produced book. This publisher allowed the two to see first-hand the atrocities that have given self publishing its bad name – offering to publish every manuscript that came their way and showering the author with false praise, including elderly authors who were charged thousands of pounds for very few poor-quality books.

Shocked at what they saw, the two friends got together and formed Pen Press – starting off as a small company in London on a mission to ensure authors were not over-charged and over-promised, and to prove that self publishing is a viable route to success. As the titles on the Pen Press label grew, so did the company – taking on more and more authors as the word started to spread. The move down to Brighton allowed the company to set up shop at Pen Press House, where we are today – the walls covered in books that are well-produced and selling well. 

Today, Pen Press has expanded into Indepenpress and has even started to offer a few conventional publishing contracts to those titles and authors who have proven themselves to be popular. But the same morals the company was founded on nearly twenty years ago remain, and we continue to work hard to ensure that self publishing is seen as a viable route to publication, not just as a last resort. With many options to choose from, we are proud to call ourselves self publishers – with a difference. 

Why not check out our PRESS page to see how other authors have fared with us? With appearances on Richard and Judy, national newspapers and even in film, our titles prove that even the smallest company can think big.