Grokkist Press
A small press at the wild margin of a learning ecology. We grow books in relationship with the people writing them — beautiful objects made to be returned to.
Our books
Fiction, essays, field guides — each one someone's red thread, made into a beautiful object worth keeping.
Change to survive, connect to thrive.
Alan Raw's debut novel — a solarpunk odyssey of resilience, connection, and quiet rebellion, where impossible growth appears in poisoned soil and knowledge belongs to the people, not to power.
Wisdom isn't something you possess. It's something you practise.
Short essays by Peter Gilderdale, exploring how wisdom emerges through attention rather than answers. A slim volume you read in an afternoon and return to for years.
Space has become infrastructure. Now we have to look after it.
A clear, grounded guide to sustainability, governance, and lifecycle responsibility in the modern space sector — for those working inside the real-world systems, with practical tools throughout.
Taking root
Forthcoming
Jim Palmer
Forthcoming
Margarita Steinberg
More are being written into being — in conversations, cafés, and the slow work of attention.
What we publish
Publishing as unfolding — a way of becoming legible.
Grokkist is a home for people who insist on meeting the world with curiosity and care. What our offerings are really for is legibility — helping you become more legible to yourself first, then to peers you didn't know you had, and outward into the world, as far as you care to be met by it. A book is among the most lasting forms that unfolding can take.
It has never been easier to publish, or to self-publish. So what we offer isn't a printing press — it's the work around the work: editorial care, context, and a community to belong to, all animated by curiosity and care, that help a book find its people. Our peer review is resonance over time; our measure of a book is how many people it helps come alive.
More about the project ↗We publish people, not just manuscripts.
A beautiful object, made properly — and meant to be kept.
We coddiwomple — moving with purpose toward a destination we find together, at the pace the work deserves.
How a book comes to be
Most begin as something smaller and alive in the community — a conversation, an essay, an evening at the Writing Salon — finding their people and changing as they go. Every so often, a cluster of that thinking wants to last. A book is what it becomes when it's ready to endure — and the physical object is that enduring form.
Often we're alongside you the whole way — a deep developmental edit and the full craft of making a book, made with you. Where many publishers hand you a contract and leave you to do the legwork, we stay in it with you, on the journey. That accompaniment is what we call groksmithing.
Wonderful — that's another door in. We'll help it kick off its shoes and feel at home here: find its people, grow its context, join the family in good company. A "finished" book is often the start of a beautiful friendship.
The terms, in plain sight
You made the thing. We help it find its people, look after it, and pay you properly — while you keep the lion's share, your name, and the freedom to walk away. We do all the publisher things; we just play a different game.
of net receipts go to you — paid quarterly, with a clear statement every time.
You own your work. We license it for as long as we're a good home for it — never own it, never lock you in.
A community of grokkists already curious about work like yours — your first readers, ready and waiting.
Non-exclusive by instinct — we want your work out in the world — and if you ever leave, it all comes home to you, cleanly.
A deep editorial relationship is the heart of it. The groksmithing that brings a book into being can be paid up front, or wholly or partly out of royalties — we find what works together, in the spirit of our Forget About the Price Tag policy. This is the part we care about most.
Distribution
Not locked to a single store. Your book reaches Amazon and — through Draft2Digital — Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play and Barnes & Noble, plus 38,000+ libraries worldwide via OverDrive and the Libby app. And it's made as a beautiful physical object, with bespoke and special-edition printing — foiling, special bindings, and more — through BookVault.
The Reading Room · the Grokkist Press online
Alongside the books, the Grokkist Press publishes online every week — essays, reflections, and deep groks. Many of these series are where books begin. Wander in by theme, or follow a contributor's red thread.
📥 The Grokkist Newsletter
News from across the whole ecology — new books, the Press, upcoming events, and the occasional deep grok — every two weeks. No noise.
Most things here begin with one. Whether you're a reader, a writer with a thread to pull, or just curious about what we're growing — say hello.