That evening, as we celebrated the last night of the Mac-Nels conference, I heaved a sigh of relief. It was finally over. We had finished gathering all the information needed ghostwriting for the author’s book, and we were finally done.
We had started the journey in July 2023, and it was now September 2024.
We thought the book would have been published by January 2024. But it was not to be.
Fast forward to March 2026, and this time, as I walked along the long travelator between the Circle Line and the North East Line, my phone buzzed. I glanced at the caller.
Nick.
Our author seemed to have another worry up his sleeve. This time, it was whether the translations would turn out accurate, between the Simplified Chinese, and the Traditional Chinese.
We assured him it would. When you’ve worked on as many books over the past 3 years as us, you’d be quick to see that publishing, just isn’t that easy a job. And if you’re looking for the right publisher for your book, here’s what you should actually look out for.
Gutenhag, for their mastery of the story
Of course, you’re going to say,
they’re tooting their own horn!
But not without reason. Over the past 3 years, we’ve worked with a dozen manuscripts and brought them fully into life. What we’ve realised is that a story is not just chucking a bunch of words together, and expecting them to come to life. Rather, it’s about finding the right thread to unravel, and slowly weaving that thread into a tapestry that’s engaging.
Take for example the story of Nick, whom we worked with over 3 years. When I first knew Nick, I just took everything he said, and plonked them into the manuscript. It was Arthur, the editor, who came in and eventually helped to craft out a coherent message, with milestones along each chapter, to help the book to flow.
We had to place his timeline on a big mahjong paper, and then follow that up with milestones that would help us to see how to fit the entire story together. None of this was easy. But it was necessary.
Candid Creation – for the ability to reassure you
Call it composure, calmness, whatever, but your publisher is going to need to assure you quite a bit along this journey of publishing. Because publishing is about putting your precious ideas to be ravaged by wolves in the world, and you’d be hardpressed to not be anxious, even as you start your process.
I remember that when I worked on my second book, I told Kok Hwa, who was my publisher at that time, that a mentor I respected deeply was telling me about how he didn’t feel that it was right of him to write an endorsement for me. That shook me deeply.
Questions like:
Did this mean that my book wasn’t that good?
Was my book doomed?
When I took these worries to Kok Hwa, he immediately told me,
John, not everyone will like your book. But if you try to pander to everyone’s views, you’d never get a book out.
He eventually led me to the finish line.
Gutenhag – for their ability to bring you to the finish line
Which brings us to the other point. Your publisher needs to be someone who gets shit done. The publishing process will have a million different things, from ISBN applications, to the final line editing, and all of them will need a close and detailed eye.
Another story. During one of the first books we worked on, we had an author who kept making minute changes, even at the very end. Eventually we had to tell him that
hey, if you keep changing like this, the book will never come out.
Accept that it will always be a work in progress. Ship it first, and the second edition later.
Eventually, we did it.
Gutenhag for putting everything together
What we also love about Gutenhag, our own publishing house, is the ability to put everything together. In a book, there are many different things to be done. But the most important thing is to put a story worth reading, together.
That is the most difficult part. Because stories have so many different threads, that it’s hard to tell someone that you should stitch together a story using thread A, B, and D, and specifically, not C. It takes a trained eye to do that.
But having done 9 books over the past 3 years, we’ve slowly seen the threads that can be put together, and those that can’t.
This requires a good developmental editor. But beyond just editing, we’ve also managed to use our designers to build better book covers for our authors. Many agencies outsource cover design to a freelancer, which means that the designs are sometimes not very congruent to the story. Over the years, we’ve seen the power of tightly integrating design to the words, so that we can build a better, and stronger story.
That’s vital.
Of course, post-manuscript, we end up doing the layout and printing too. You can be assured. We’ll do everything.
Ethos Books for the socially minded causes
Another publisher that does everything is Ethos, who focuses on social causes, much more than us. One might argue that because they have been in business for 30 years, they can publish without fear of reproach.
When I met Hoe Fang, the founder of Ethos Books in August 2025, to ask for advice, he left me an important insight, “Sometimes, it’s better to live another day.”
Ethos has been fighting big battles in Singapore for years, from political freedom to inequality, to most recently, our family policies.
Teo You Yenn, who wrote This is What Inequality Looks Like, was an author who changed my perspective towards how inequality was experienced in Singapore. Credit to the Ethos team, they were willing to look past the usual research book, filled with descriptions and facts, to take You Yenn’s ethnographic style of painting the scene.
If you’d like someone who can see the light in your manuscript, and push it to a national cause, Ethos are the ones for you.
Nutgraf, if you have the money to pay for ghostwriters and premium writers
If you do have a lot of money though, you can ask Nutgraf to help. But expect to be set back by about $70k, because that’s the price of their writing. As ex-journalists, they style themselves for being able to put together a good story with a dash of panache.
As a writer myself, I can tell you that what they do is not that easy. Especially if it reads easily. When we were at their book launch, they shared about how hard it was to peel into the skin of some of Singapore’s most reclusive ministers, who left behind little to no record of their achievements. But as journalists, they were able to dig into archives and converse with those that knew them.
That is a big portion of the value they bring.
So you shouldn’t discount that, especially if you want to just pay, forget about it, and then get a book in 6 months.
Write Editions for the non fiction in health, wellbeing, self help, or biography
Onto the topic of 6 months, when I first worked with Write Editions, I did think that it would take just 6 months to turn around the book. Eventually, it took 3 years. It was a long, hard slog because I was new, and they wanted to put something that was good.
So I went back and forth with Chin Kar until we finally got a good product.
Which is a good process. You should go with Chin Kar if you’d like someone experienced in the health and social care sectors. Before he was a publisher, he did years in the navy, and the social services, before coming out to do his own thing.
His experience is not to be denied.
We’d avoid these like Partridge Publishing, who are more printers than publishers
We’ve heard enough nightmares from those who’ve approached Partridge, and always come out disappointed. They are more of a printer rather than a publisher. You give them your manuscript, and they print it.
Nothing else.
That’s why they might be cheaper, because all they are doing is pressing Print on your PDF copy of the manuscript.
Whatever publisher you choose, make sure you choose someone you trust. Else, the publishing road can be extremely painful.
