TCK Publishing was founded in 2011 by Tom Corson-Knowles. Tom Corson-Knowles is also an author and has published a number of his own books through TCK Publishing. It’s not clear if he started TCK Publishing as a way to self-publish, but it is clear that TCK has moved past that, publishing many books, on a number subjects, by many authors.
TCK Publishing describes themselves by saying: “We publish fiction and non-fiction eBooks, print books, and audio books in all major genres and niches.” While this is technically true, they mostly publish general nonfiction and business nonfiction. These appear to be the books they have the most experience selling. In most of the fiction genres, only two to four books are listed, many books showing up in multiple categories. They’ve published more historical romance than any other genre, and still only ten books are listed at the time of reviewing. They have previously published about ten books a year, and are now planning on publishing approximately twenty books a year.
Originally the TCK Publishing website was focused entirely on recruiting authors, rather than readers, both in terms of submitting manuscripts and in attending their courses. In the past few years they have switched away from this method and now their website is reader focused, although they still do offer courses, and the section of the website geared towards writers is still significant. For example when you click on the nonfiction authors section, you do not get a list of the nonfiction authors they represent, but a pitch for the reader to submit their nonfiction manuscript. It includes a mention of how many nonfiction books they have sold and resources for potential authors. They do not offer similar stats for fiction writers, but they do have other resources. This is not standard practice, and I assume this was also part of their former author geared site.
TCK Publishing has reached out to me to request that I list them more than any other publishing company, over the past five years. Originally I declined because of the focus of the website and some concerns raised here that have been largely resolved recently, when they changed their method for calculating royalties (You can see the full breakdown of how they now structure royalties here). They are very forward about promoting themselves, but as long as this is also happening in terms of the books they are publishing it is not necessarily a bad thing. They also do talk a fair amount about marketing in terms of writers, which is a good thing.
They also have made it clear that they now offer intensive editing to the books they accept, which was a previous sticking point. Their distribution is Ingram, which is not particularly helpful. It means a local bookstore could special order your work, but it is unlikely to be on the shelves otherwise.
You can learn more about their submission guidelines here.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2021 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.
She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.
