Ameline
am·e·line  ·  noun
  1. care-ful work; an effort made with one's whole self, poured into something worth building.
  2. a publishing studio that walks the last mile of a book beside its author, and hands it back whole.
from the old sense of diligent, devoted work — the kind that takes years, and is often done alone.
Cass Scutt
Founder, Ameline Books

Hello, and welcome — I'm really glad you're here.

I'm Cass, the founder of Ameline Books. If you've found your way to this page, there's a fair chance you're holding a manuscript, or the beginnings of one, and quietly wondering what on earth happens next. Don't worry, you are in the right place.

A little about me.

I come from a background in communications and marketing, and some years ago I taught myself the craft of self-publishing and went on to build a catalogue of ten books. I learned what it genuinely takes to turn a manuscript into a finished thing someone can hold: the editing, the design, the formatting, the technical pieces most people find bewildering. Nothing about the process is a mystery to me any more, which means it doesn't have to be one for you.

I'm also a writer, and that shapes everything about how I do this. I've written and published a children's book, and I'm in the middle of my own memoir. So the vulnerability I'll be asking you to trust me with isn't something I understand from a distance — it's something I'm living too.

Why I created Ameline.

When I looked at what was on offer, nothing fit the kind of stories I wanted to work with. Because these aren't ordinary books, and this isn't really about the book at all. It's about holding space for someone who has written down the most tender parts of their life, and is about to hand them to the world — and almost no one out there was treating it as the tender thing it is.

There's a lot of money changing hands in this space, too — often for work that isn't good enough. People pay dearly and are handed a poor-quality book in return.

A memoir is someone's life; when the book that carries it is careless, it does a disservice to the story and to the person who lived it. These books deserve to be made to a standard worthy of the life inside them.

So that's what I built. A studio that treats these stories with the care they're owed, holds them to a real standard, and never takes them from you. Your manuscript goes the rest of the way without you surrendering an inch of control — your rights, your royalties, your readers, kept. I don't take a cut of your story. I help you finish it, and I hand it back to you, whole.

To you and your publishing journey!