About CharterLight
Ideas Worth Carrying Forward.
An independent publishing house for books that illuminate.
Our Story
CharterLight was started by authors who wanted a different kind of publishing company.
In 2010, Bobby Glen James wrote 8 Wisdoms, a work of fiction that teaches personal development through story. What he found waiting for new authors was an industry of vanity presses: companies charging writers large sums to print their books, then leaving those books to sit in boxes in the author's garage. A finished manuscript, a drained bank account, and nowhere for the book to go.
He decided to build something else. Not a press that profits from an author's hope, and not a traditional house that takes most of what a book earns. Something in between, run by writers who had been through it.
That is what CharterLight is. We look for books that spread something good and teach us how to become better humans, and then we help get them out into the world.
How CharterLight Works
We are not a traditional publisher, and we are not a vanity publisher. Here is exactly what that means.
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The author keeps the profits
For now, all profits from a CharterLight book go to the author who wrote it. Not a share. All of them.
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We help you get the book ready
Editing, preparing the manuscript, and getting it into a state where it can actually be sold. That's the work we do alongside new authors.
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Your sales connections stay yours
The accounts that sell your book are set up by you, in your name. We show you how it's done, and then your book is listed here, alongside the rest of the CharterLight library.
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Not every manuscript is accepted
Every book goes through the submission process, and we say no to books we can't get behind. That's what keeps the library worth being part of.
The lantern
Why CharterLight?
Our emblem is a man holding a lantern. He isn't the source of the light. He carries it, so that others can see what's in front of them.
That is how we think about publishing. The ideas belong to the writers who found them. Our work is to carry them into view, and to keep them lit long enough for others to read by.
- Discovery
- Understanding
- Wisdom
- Knowledge
- Ideas
Not a vanity publisher
We don't take an author's money to print a book and walk away. And we don't accept everything that arrives. A press that says yes to everyone is selling printing, not publishing.
Not a traditional publisher
We don't take the lion's share of what your book earns, and we don't ask you to hand over control of it. You keep your work, your sales, and your profits.
What We Publish
We look for books that leave readers seeing more clearly than when they began.
Most of what we publish is nonfiction, but a story can teach as well as an essay can, and sometimes better. 8 Wisdoms is a novel that carries eight principles inside its narrative. Fiction is welcome here when it teaches or uplifts.
- Personal development
- Fiction that teaches
- Philosophy
- Business
- Leadership
- Human potential
- Practical wisdom
- Parable and allegory
- Rediscovered classics
- Modern interpretations of classic works
- Meaningful nonfiction
- Books from new and established authors
Our Philosophy
A book is one of the few things that can carry an idea from one generation to the next, intact.
We publish with that responsibility in mind.
Looking Forward
Three books are only the beginning.
CharterLight exists to find new authors and help them get published without being taken advantage of along the way. Every title we add is chosen the same way: by asking whether it spreads something good, and whether it teaches us how to become better humans.
If you have written something like that, fiction or not, we would like to read about it.