Remember the fable of the tortoise and the hare? We all learned as kids that slow and steady wins in the end. But the publishing industry’s dominated by the hares. You’ve seen them: fast-reading, fast-selling books with a big name on the front. They loom large on the doorway displays one month and are relegated to the bargain bin thereafter—unloved, unremembered, and easily replaced by next month’s Next Big Thing. (Hare today, gone tomorrow, you might say.)
We’re looking to change that.
Tortoise Books focuses on quality, not quantity. Or more accurately, we know quality will bring quantity down the road, in the slow and steady race to win discerning readers. We’re a small, independent publisher that’s using the best attributes of the old industry (extensive editing, heavy pre-publication publicity work, and a financial structure where we’re invested in the future success of our authors) plus the best attributes of publish-on-demand (the ability to get something good out there without regard to whether or not someone thinks it has a market, or whether it fits into some multinational conglomerate’s busy schedule) to build a brand readers will trust.
Read our books and see why Rick Kogan (of Chicago Tribune and WGN Radio fame) recently called us “one of the best, most provocative, and rewarding publishing houses in the entire country.”
We are usually accepting a limited number of submissions via the luxury submission and critique process. Free submissions will be available intermittently; please check this page periodically or follow us on BlueSky @tortoisebooks.bsky.social for updates.
Thirty-Six Fighting Holes by Nathan Weidman
The few. The proud. The Marines. Do you have what it takes…not just to join them, but to talk others into joining? Can you occupy an isolated outpost—a strip mall office—and work the phones and set appointments and bring people in? Can you keep at it month after month, coping with all manner of bureaucratic absurdity, working with no vacations so you can hit your recruitment quotas, flogging yourself until your marriage and your sanity are in jeopardy?
And did we mention there’s a war going on—and volunteers are hard to come by?
"This is the most surprising memoir you'll read this year."
— Brian Castner, author of The Long Walk
Frank Buck by Joseph G. Peterson
Frank Buck is a fat f*ck. A slob, a middle-aged loser, he’s living in Chicagoland with his mother and collecting disability checks, drinking Svedka vodka and driving aimlessly through the nighttime city. Until he’s recruited to be a hitmanby a shadowy psycopath he knows only as Rodger…
Peterson is “one of the Windy City’s best-kept secrets.”
— Kirkus
Hidden River by Sara Lippmann
Thirty-five year old Cassandra (aka Cass, Cassie, Cassidy, and Cassiopeia) Trout is going nowhere fast. Stuck in her hometown of Philadelphia, she spends her lackluster days working retail and running, and then rinse, repeat. But a surprise wedding invitation from an estranged childhood friend is set to change all that.
"Lippmann writes like no other."
— Paula Bomer, author of The Stalker