Plain Lantern 
People ask us this more often than you might expect, usually in a kind way. How does a small press like this decide what to put its name on? The honest answer is that we say no a great deal. Most ideas that cross the desk are perfectly good books that simply are not Plain Lantern books. We keep a short list of standards, more or less taped above the desk, and a title has to pass all of them before we make it.
We start with the reader
Before we think about a topic, we picture the person who will hold the book. Often that is someone in their seventies reading by a lamp in the evening, or a daughter buying a gift for a father who has gone quiet since he retired. A lot of publishing chases whatever is selling this season. We find it steadier to ask a plainer question: would this book genuinely suit the people we already make books for? If it does not, the idea stops there, however clever it is.
The four things every title has to pass
Once a book clears that first question, it meets four standards. They are not complicated, and that is rather the point.
- Calm and uncluttered. Generous spacing, a clear layout, nothing gimmicky or shouting for attention. If a page feels busy when we print a test copy, it goes back.
- Genuinely useful. The book has to do a real job. A puzzle to fill a quiet afternoon, prompts that help someone reflect, a word search that keeps a mind ticking over. Filler does not make it through.
- Large print and accessible. Readable type and good contrast as standard, because so many of our readers have tired eyes. A book that needs a magnifying glass has already failed the people it was made for.
- Made to be kept. A considered cover, consistent quality, paper that feels decent in the hand. We want a book that earns a place on a shelf instead of the recycling.
What we turn down
It is often easier to describe the standards by what they exclude. Books padded out to hit a page count do not make it. Neither do busy covers, or print so small it would frustrate the reader we have in mind. We turn down topics we cannot speak to honestly, and anything that leans on hype to carry a thin idea. None of these are bad commercial choices for someone else. They are just not what we want sitting under our lantern.
Why we stay small and slow
We could publish a good deal more by loosening any one of these. We have chosen not to. Releasing a handful of titles a year means we can lay each one out properly, order a physical proof, and read it the way a reader would, in an armchair rather than on a screen. By the time a new book joins the library, it has been through all of that. Our coming soon shelf shows what is on the workbench right now.
Trust is the point of all this
A catalogue this size lives or dies on trust. If you buy one of our books for your mother and the print turns out cramped, you will not buy another, and you would be right not to. So the standards are partly plain self-interest. The easiest way to keep a reader is to avoid wasting their time or their eyesight. Holding the line on what we publish is how we keep the promise the rest of the site makes.
The short version
We choose slowly, and we choose for one kind of reader rather than for everyone. That makes for a smaller catalogue and, we think, a more trustworthy one. If you would like to see how the standards turn out in practice, browse the Plain Lantern library and have a look at what made it through.