Clean slate.
Same mark.
Everything else new.
The AH brush monogram is kept exactly as it is. The palette, the typography and the entire architecture are replaced. This page explains what changed and why.
The mark is a human gesture.
The site around it is a system.
Look at the AH monogram: ink, pressure, a hand moving fast. It is the least mechanical thing on the page. So the design does not try to match it — it sets it against precision. Hairline rules, mono spec labels, registration marks, numbered stages. The tension between the two is the whole idea: a publishing house is human stories made with industrial discipline.
Every other literary publisher's site resolves that tension in one direction — dusty ivory, gold rules, a serif whisper. It reads as heritage and it looks the same as fifty other houses. Holding the tension instead makes the house look like what it actually is: a modern production house with taste.
Out with ivory, bronze and terracotta.
True ink black. Clean bright paper — not yellowed. And one hot accent with a reason behind it.
It is the red pencil. The editor's mark, the proof correction, the ink a reader makes in a margin. It belongs to publishing more than gold ever did — and no publisher currently claims it. It is the colour of the hand at work, which is exactly what this site is about.
Fraunces, Space Grotesk, JetBrains Mono.
A display serif with real character, a grotesk for reading, and a monospace for the spec labels that give the site its proof-sheet feel.
Fraunces
An old-style serif with optical size and wonk axes — warm, opinionated and contemporary. Replaces Lora and Cormorant, which both read as generic literary default.
Space Grotesk
A modern grotesk with slightly technical letterforms. Carries the body and the UI. Replaces Inter, which the old site shared with a thousand others.
JetBrains Mono
All labels, indices, statuses and terms. This is the typeface doing the heavy lifting on the design thesis — it is what makes the site read as engineered rather than decorated.
Hairlines, registration marks, margins
Corner registration marks and numbered margin rules run throughout, so every section reads like a page pulled from a production proof.
Four answers and I build it for real.
These are the only things I cannot decide for you, because they are commercial commitments rather than design choices.
What does each pack cost?
I have built the packs with full deliverable lists but left investment as “quoted at review”, because I will not invent a price for your business. Give me four figures — or a “from” number for each — and they go straight in.
Are the existing books Anema House titles?
The Second Genesis seven carry live Amazon editions and also sit on the author site. Label them as Anema House publications, or as a separate imprint distributed by the house? This decides what the catalogue is allowed to claim.
Rights, term, territory, royalty.
I have written “copyright retained by the author, always” because that is the only honest default and it is the single strongest thing you can say to a writer. Confirm it, and tell me the rights term you want to offer — I will publish it on the site as a commitment, not a footnote.
Invitation-only, or open?
Built as invitation-only with the enquiry funnel open, and a single switch to change it. A pack structure with published pricing generally argues for opening submissions — the funnel is what feeds it.
What is real here, and what is not.
Real
Every cover is a real catalogue asset. The AH mark is the approved brush monogram, unaltered. All titles and hooks are the real ones from the catalogue. Status labels match the true state of each title.
Proposed — not yet a commitment
The pack structure, stage names, review turnaround and “copyright retained” promise are my proposals for the house to adopt. They are written as if live so you can judge them as a finished site, but none of them are binding until you confirm them.
Deliberately absent
No prices, no testimonials, no award claims, no author photos, no sales figures, no distribution partners. All of those would have to be invented, and an invented credential on a publishing site is the fastest way to lose the exact writers you want.