Michelkin Publishing

Number of signs there that this might be a design shop that's set up to self-publish the owner's book(s). Once you've got one vertical, why not add another?

Except, of course, that's why the publishing experience is so vital. Treating book publishing as an off-shoot, or entering in by reinventing or re-designing the wheel ends in tears all too often.

Standard wait applies: two years, at least. With this sort of set-up and those terms, I'll be sceptical even then.

(And, for a design house, I'm spending way too long on loading pages on that site. And holy hell the colour choices. Yellow on white. White on white. White on a variety of colours. The entirety of the Contact Us form. Even the design business looks more like an Etsy offshoot than an actual studio. The graphic design section boasts about stock images....)

The book cover services seem to misunderstand that authors typically don't submit a book cover to a publisher. It is, however, primarily aimed at people self-publishing. I'm terrible at judging cover quality, so I won't comment there but they have some samples posted here. (Addendum: as I pasted that link in, I realize they don't have permalinks or page titles on the site, which is a Web Design Problem.)

Minimal digging reveals the two partners are a teacher and a student services specialist. Both have day jobs in addition to Michelkin. I'm sure they're exceptional at what they do, but publishing ain't what they do.


The more I look at this the more troubling this gets. The editing services are a conflict of interest issue--publishing isn't just something you offer as a freelancer--but what really strikes me there is that they mention they'll edit academic papers. That's a Very Bad Idea.

I dub those sample covers awful.

Also, yeah, that academic papers thing.

VeryBigBeard said:

but what really strikes me there is that they mention they'll edit academic papers. That's a Very Bad Idea.

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If it's not too off-topic, could you explain why for those of us that don't know much about academic papers? (Like me )

VeryBigBeard said:

The book cover services seem to misunderstand that authors typically don't submit a book cover to a publisher. It is, however, primarily aimed at people self-publishing. I'm terrible at judging cover quality, so I won't comment there but they have some samples posted here.

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About their covers, they say

Do you need a cover that’s eye-catching and original?

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Those covers certainly are eye-catching. Possibly not in they way they intended.

tiakall said:

If it's not too off-topic, could you explain why for those of us that don't know much about academic papers? (Like me )

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A student who hires an editor to work on an academic paper is a.) missing the point, b.) wasting his or her money, and c.) risking penalty.

It may depend slightly on the university and/or professor, but there's a reason why people can't post their homework papers for crit in SYW. If someone else is helping to write the thing, it's academically dishonest.

There can be a bit of a fine line with these things between tutoring and the kind of substantive feedback that's going to mean a student isn't being honest about his or her own ideas anymore. Michelkin's founders both have teaching experience. They probably just want to help students learn. Unfortunately, with academic papers, there can be rules, especially when outside services are involved.