Perfectly Respectable began with a simple observation: a joke is twice as funny when it is bound in cloth. Give someone a novelty item and they laugh once. Give them a handsome hardback titled The Complete Guide to Looking Busy, set in a classical serif, with a frontispiece and an index, and they will laugh every time they walk past the shelf for the next decade.
So that is what we make. Gag books that are physically indistinguishable from the kind of book someone buys to seem interesting. Ebook covers for titles that will never be written. Objects that take everyday life a little more seriously than it deserves, and themselves rather less.
With everyday life taken a little more seriously.
The house style
Every title is set in the same two typefaces, printed in the same four colours, and marked with the same duck. The uniformity is the point. A single Perfectly Respectable book on a shelf looks like an eccentric purchase. Five of them look like a collection, and a collection looks like a person with convictions.
Our colours are Forest Green, Burgundy, Parchment and Stone. Our mascot is a duck, chosen because ducks are dignified from the waterline up and frantic underneath, which struck us as the correct metaphor for most adult life.
What we publish
Short books with long titles. Essays that commit entirely to a premise nobody asked about. Field guides to internal states. Memoirs by people who have not done anything. Histories of things that do not have a history.
The text inside is real — written, edited and set properly. These are not blank notebooks with a funny cover. Someone genuinely sat down and wrote four thousand words defending the afternoon nap, and we think you can tell.
Where to buy
We are a publisher, not a shop. Everything we make is sold through places far better at logistics than we are:
- Books are printed and shipped by Amazon. Each title on the catalogue page links straight to its listing.
- Ebook covers are sold on Etsy as instant digital downloads. See Ebook Covers.
- Everything else we recommend — the bookends, the totes, the wax seals — appears in the Journal, with a link to wherever it is actually sold.
None of those links earn us anything yet, which the duck has been told about and has taken badly. The duck is, as far as we can establish, extremely expensive.
Occasions we are built for
Birthdays where the recipient claims to want nothing. Secret Santa draws involving a colleague whose surname you are not certain of. Housewarmings. Leaving parties. Mother's Day, Father's Day, and the specific day in late December when you realise you have forgotten someone. Also, with no occasion at all, for yourself, on a shelf you walk past often.
Contact
Editorial, press, wholesale or an idea for a title you think we should publish:
hello@perfectlyrespectable.co.uk