A Nepal that thinks in its own voice.
SPH’s public mission is more thinkers in Nepal — books that can stand in public without borrowing a voice from somewhere else. The commercial form of that mission is private publishing. We do not run a factory of packages. We take on few authors, and we give each book the time a serious object needs.
If you are looking for the cheapest way to put 200 pages in a cover, this is the wrong house. If you want a publisher who will sit with the idea, the sentences, the object and the public life of the book, continue.
What “private” means
- Few books at a time, so an editor’s week is not a queue with your name at the back.
- A dedicated path from conversation to colophon — not a shared template with your title dropped in.
- Confidentiality as a default. Your unpublished pages are not a marketing story.
- A proposal written for this book, not a PDF of three packages.
The full path
People arrive at different points. Some have a sentence. Some have a trunk of notes. Some have a manuscript that has been rewritten twice and still is not a book. The path is the same apparatus, entered at the right door:
- Thinking — what the book is for, who it is for, what it must not pretend to be.
- Writing — including manuscript development and ghostwriting when the substance is yours and the hours are not.
- Editing — structure, language, proof. In Nepali, in English, or both.
- Design and pre-press — the interior, the cover, the files a press can actually print.
- ISBN as publisher of record, printing, and the boring bibliographic work that makes a book findable.
- Distribution through the channels we actually use.
- A campaign: a public introduction with claims we can show, not a burst of unpaid enthusiasm.
Who this is for
People who can give the book what it costs — in money and in attention — and who want the house involved, not merely a press. Founders, public people, scholars, families with a story that should be an object, writers who have already tried to do this alone. We are not looking for a mass of applicants to convert. We are looking for work we can stand behind.
SPH is an approved publisher with Tribhuvan University. Academic titles that need that fact can travel this path too. The university approval is not a substitute for editorial standards of our own.
What we will not do
- Invent an ISBN, a review, an award, a sales figure or a ranking.
- Put a number on this page that pretends to be your quote.
- Publish a book we cannot stand behind because the fee arrived.
- Pretend a printed file is the same as a published book.
How to begin
The submission is Start a book. That form is how work enters the house. Email sammanpublishinghouse@gmail.com if you have a question the application cannot hold — a confidential constraint, a date, a rights issue. Do not send the manuscript there and wait.
Questions
Is this vanity publishing?
Vanity publishing is printing without judgement. Private publishing at SPH is a house that still says no. Paying for a dedicated process is how most serious first books in Nepal actually happen. The fee buys time and apparatus. It does not buy a spine we are ashamed of.
Will you write the book for me?
If the material is yours, yes, under a written credit agreement. If you want a book about a life that is not yours, that is a different ethical problem and we will not tidy it away.
Do you work outside Kathmandu?
The house is in Kathmandu. The authors need not be. Conversation can travel. Printing and distribution for Nepal still run from here.
Can I just email you?
You can write to sammanpublishinghouse@gmail.com. Manuscripts and publishing applications still need Start a book, or the work has no place in the system that actually reads them.
One application. An editor reads it.
Start a book