Mortal Ink Press Heritage

Record your family's legacy in ink.
We can help you make it happen.

Publishing Concierge Services

Mortal Ink Press Heritage provides publishing concierge services to writers interested in self-publishing their personal or family memoirs. We can help you with everything from writing and formatting to getting your book up for sale in your favorite online bookstores. With us, you become your own publisher. Any royalties you earn go straight to you, and you’ll have complete control over what happens to your books after our job is finished.

The following packages are for books of 50,000 words or less. (For your reference, 50,000 words is a book of approximately 250 pages.) If your book is significantly longer, your price may be higher, but we can also customize packages based on your specific needs.

Basic memoir package – $250.

If your manuscript is already a final, print-ready Word document and you already have a great cover, we will (1) set up your online publishing accounts; (2) show you how to purchase ISBN numbers for your book if you need/want them; (3) convert your Word document to PDF for print and epub for ebook; (4) upload your print and ebook files for you; (5) show you how to navigate your accounts so you can order proofs, start selling, and see how your books are doing. Your end product? Your memoir, available in both print and ebook format.

Standard memoir package ~ $350.

The standard package includes everything the basic package includes but is for clients who don’t feel comfortable enough with Microsoft Word to give us a print-ready file OR who want their book to include professional typesetting (i.e. they don’t want it to look self-published on the inside!). With this package, you give us your Word manuscript, and we do the formatting and typesetting for your print book, in addition to ebook conversion. You end up with an ebook and a beautiful, professional print book.

Add-On Services

Basic cover design with your photos/images – $65

Your cover can make the difference between a book that looks like it was created by an amateur or a pro. If you need basic cover design, we can work with you to create your cover from family photos, artwork, or images of family memorabilia (i.e. a high-res photo of your grandfather’s pocket watch or your grandmother’s crochet doilies). 

Want something even more professional? We know some great places to find cover designers, and we can work with your cover designer to make sure they have the specifications they need to create an awesome cover for you.

Copy editing and proofreading – $0.0125 per word

Copy editing is about technical perfection and polish. When we copy edit, we check for proper grammar, punctuation, capitalization, spelling, etc. With this service, we will perform a copy edit and send your manuscript back to you to accept or reject any changes we recommend. You will return the manuscript to us, and we will then conduct a final proofread. With editing, we charge per word. A 50,000 word manuscript would cost $625.

Line editing – $0.02 per word

Line editing is about making your words sound beautiful. When we line edit, we go line by line to make sure everything you write is clear, correct, and consistent. With this service, we will perform a line edit and send your manuscript back to you to accept or reject any changes we recommend. You will return the manuscript to us, and we will then conduct a final proofread. With editing, we charge per word. A 50,000 word manuscript would cost $1000.

Note: We include copy edits in our line editing, but if you make major changes after you receive our edits back, we may recommend a second copy edit between the line edit and the proofread. That optional service would cost $0.01 per word.

Ghostwriting services ~ negotiable

Want to get your family’s words on paper but not sure where to start? Not everyone is a writer! But we can work with you to ghostwrite your family’s memoir.

Since ghostwriting projects tend to vary significantly from family to family, our fee will vary as well. Please contact us to set up an interview about your project, after which we will provide you with a price quote. Note that our ghostwriting fees are based on an hourly rate of $50/hr. In our quote, we will break down your expected costs for you.

Important Things to Know

  1. Who is my publisher? You are. When you work with Mortal Ink Press Heritage, you are paying a service provider to help you self-publish your family’s memoir. We are not your publisher. You are your publisher.
  2. Who gets my royalties? You do. Since you are your own publisher, we don’t receive any of your royalties. You will be paid directly by whoever you publish your books through (probably Amazon and IngramSpark).
  3. Who owns the copyright to my book? You do. You are free to use the files we create for you however you would like.  However, if you publish a book with a cover or interior file formatting that we designed, we own the copyright to that specific design, and you must include this on your copyright page. (Your contract will show you the exact language. It will most likely sound like this: “Cover design and typesetting copyright 2020 by Mortal Ink Press Heritage.”  You can put it in small print!)
  4. Who markets and advertises my book? You do. Mortal Ink Press Heritage does not offer any advertising or marketing services. If you need help marketing your book, we recommend that you reach out to a book marketing specialist. However, note that most self-published books do not sell well, and family memoirs aren’t typically money-makers for anyone. Do this because you want a beautiful book that your family will cherish, not because you expect the book to be a source of income.
  5. I looked at your page last week, and your prices were a lot lower. What happened? We do our best to keep this page current, but the prices listed above are subject to change. The prices listed in your contract are final.
  6. Why should I work with you? Until recently, Mortal Ink Press was primarily in the business of publishing one author’s book. Then we got a call from a family member who needed help with a memoir. That project was incredibly gratifying for everyone, and we realized there were other families out there that might want similar help. So we’re pretty new to the self-publishing concierge business, but the trade off is that we’re much cheaper than our competitors. Additionally, when you work with us, you’ll get professional-quality work from a company that won’t treat you like one of thousands of clients. You matter to us, and we want you to be thrilled with your end product!
  7. Can you help me with my business, pop-science, self-help, instructional or other book, or do you only do memoirs? We can help you with any book except for a picture book, and we are specifically targeting clients with memoirs to publish because we think it is especially important for those clients to get to see their words in print. Everyone should have the opportunity to record their family legacy for future generations.
  8. Want to see what our books look like? We would be happy to send you a copy of other books we’ve published so that you can see the quality of our products.

Ready to get started?

Email us at mybook@mortalinkpress.com and ask to set up a phone interview about our memoir publishing services or just call us at 984-464-3805.

We look forward to speaking with you!

Mortal Ink Press Heritage Projects

These are the books we’ve helped families publish: