UPDATE: Our Starlight imprint is currently full. Please join our newsletter to be notified when we open up for new manuscripts. 

Being published by a commercial publisher is increasingly difficult. Publishers take on a lot of risk to publish a new title, so they have to be picky.

Here at Exisle Publishing we publish around 40 new titles every year and are planning on expanding our output. At the same time, we also want to try and bring more unique voices to the world and, after a lot of consideration, we have found a way that will suit emerging writers.

Introducing Exisle Lives: Starlight

Starlight is the newest imprint of Exisle Publishing, in partnership with Exisle Academy. We are an established, traditional publisher with a global presence who has been publishing mainstream, successful books since 1991. Starlight will focus on memoir, life story, autobiography and lived experience. We see it as a way to preserve and share the more diverse stories that need to be told, with a special emphasis on providing publishing opport`unities to writers whose work may have been ignored or overlooked by commercial publishers in the past.

We want to work with you to bring your story to the world.

Small sample of the many memoirs, biographies and important stories published by Exisle and available in bookstores worldwide

Some of the titles produced by Exisle Lives: Starlight will be published in the conventional manner. Others will come from a hybrid model of self-publishing and professional publishing. They will all be produced by the same publishing professionals and sold and marketed by Exisle's global teams.

Exisle Publishing publishes just 40 titles per year, yet receives many thousands of annual submissions. Through our education arm, Exisle Academy, we are introducing ways that we can help more authors see their work in print. In a traditional publishing model, the publisher takes on 100% of the financial risk and pays authors a small royalty. In a hybrid model, the author shares the publishing expenses with the publisher, and is in return paid a significantly higher royalty on sales. 

With its hybrid model of publishing, Exisle Lives: Starlight puts you in far more control than the conventional publishing model. You can be as involved as much, or as little, as you like in the editorial and design, sales and marketing process. You could also earn more money than from the conventional royalty arrangements.

This new combined publishing model means that your book will be treated far more seriously by reviewers, booksellers, and libraries than most self-published books ever are. This gives your book a serious chance of reaching an audience of some scale and also earning you some money. You leave the normal horrors of self-publishing behind, not least because we deal with the printers and sales and storage.

Partner With an Established, Global Publisher to Develop and Sell Your Book

This hybrid publishing route is not open to all comers and will only be available to selected writers. As the books are published under an Exisle imprint we must be very careful and selective. What is included in the Starlight imprint range must fit some quality criteria and we can help you get there. Exisle Publishing has thirty years’ experience of publishing and our own Academy was created to help authors become published—either by us or another publisher.

Step One: Assessment by a Professional Publisher

Register below and pay our assessment and development fee (significantly discounted from our normal manuscript review rates), and you will be taken to a webpage with instructions on how to send your book via email to a top publisher with many years’ experience. This will be a publisher from the Exisle Publishing team who has personally helped bring hundreds of successful books to market. Unlike regular submissions, which are quickly read and dismissed, your book will be pored over rigorously as if you were a contracted author on our publishing schedule.

Step Two: Actionable Feedback to Develop Your Book

Once you send in your manuscript, we will then send you a thorough questionnaire so we can understand more about you and what you are looking to achieve. This will help us provide contextual advice that aligns with your publishing goals. Some authors are working towards are large, global audience. Some writers want to serve a specific community well or to create a beautiful and enduring package to leave a legacy. Some will want a combination of all of these. We will listen to your story, understand your goals, and provide honest but helpful feedback to help you get there.

Once you return the completed questionnaire, we will get back to you having read your manuscript. We will send you an honest assessment and report saying what if anything needs to be done to make your manuscript a realistic publishing proposition. Areas covered can include positioning, structure, writing styles, chapterisation, word length, referencing, illustration, and what your book may be compared with in the market. We will look at market opportunities and possible formats and provide professional advice on this.

Step Three: Develop Your Book in Line With Our Guidance

Depending on the extent of the feedback received, this could take just a few days, or a number of weeks. You may decide to undertake a rewrite of your book, or you may choose to make just a few strategic tweaks to significantly enhance your work's publishability. You are the author, and this phase is up to you. You will have up to three months to work through this stage, but you do not need to take that long. Whenever you are ready, come back to us with your developed manuscript.

Step Four: Consultation and Publishing Offer

Upon receipt of your developed book, you and the senior publisher you have been working with will arrange a time to meet. If you happen to be based near our offices in Australia (NSW), New Zealand (Dunedin), the United States (Los Angeles) or the United Kingdom (Devon), we may be able to meet in person. More often these days the meeting will take place on Zoom or your preferred video conferencing platform. 

During the call, we will discuss your book, the progress you have made, and your prospects for publication. Based on our assessment and your goals, we will offer you either a traditional or a hybrid publishing contract depending on what we believe is the best fit to bring your book to market. This stage has no obligation, and while we hope that you will end up moving forward with Exisle, you are free to take your improved manuscript and publishing knowledge and shop around elsewhere or even self-publish.

Exisle Publishing is a traditional, royalty paying publisher. We have published over 400 books, and you can find our titles in libraries and bookstores the world over, and will frequently see them covered by mainstream media. This means we have distribution relationships with all major English language bookstores and wholesalers, which all our authors (including hybrid-published authors) benefit from.

Being a traditional publisher means that our business model usually requires taking all the financial risk in a book and paying our authors royalties on their book sales. Hybrid publishing is more of a business partnership between the publisher and author, where the risk is shared and, in return, royalties are typically much higher. 

The offer we make you will depend significantly on your book and your publishing goals. Everything will be clearly explained up front, and you will have no obligations or hidden costs. Our mission is to help you succeed as an author and place our experience, industry connections, marketing team, and resources at your disposal.

A standard manuscript review for a non-fiction book costs $2997. In order to facilitate more writers into our Starlight imprint, we are making our assessment and development process available for a dramatically reduced fee. 

For VIP Support, Please Contact Exisle Academy Program Coordinator Nathan Thomas at [email protected]

For support over the phone, please call our offices as below:
Australia (NSW): +02 4998 3327, New Zealand (Dunedin):  03 477 1615, United Kingdom and North America: +447487222216