An independent literary press
I The Press
Quoin & Forme Press is an independent literary press. We publish a small list, chosen on the strength of the writing and made with the same care once chosen. We are not in a hurry. A book goes to press when it is ready and not before.
We have no house genre and no house formula. What our books share is a way of working: a long look at the writing, and an equally long look at the object it becomes.
A quoin is the wedge that locks a page of type into its forme, squared and held fast before it ever meets the press. Nothing prints until it holds. We took the name for what it asks of a book: that every piece be set true before it goes to press.
II The Making
A book is an object before it is anything else. Our interiors are set for reading — a text face chosen for the book rather than for the template, margins with room to breathe, a page that sits still under the eye. We print on good stock and hold the spine to a house standard, so that a row of our books reads as a row of our books.
We would rather issue one title well than three in a hurry. Where a book earns it there will be signed and numbered printings; when the economics allow, sewn bindings and French flaps. Until then, nothing leaves here that we would not want on our own shelf.
III The Catalogue
Hartford, June 1944. Days before the largest amphibious invasion in history, the typewriter on General Eisenhower's desk is sabotaged — and four trained OSS men die trying to repair it. The fifth man sent in is a draft-rejected, asthmatic civilian named Henry J. O'Malley: a Hartford repairman, and the only one who can save the machine. The debut of The Blackjack Harrigan Files.
The series →Los Angeles, February 1942. A contract player at RKO — sixty pictures in, and still waiting for the part that mattered — reports that the temporary fillings in her teeth are picking up enemy radio. Every agency in California dismisses it. One man does not, and the operation he builds around Lucille Ball's remarkable ear stays classified for thirty-two years. The second of The Blackjack Harrigan Files.
The series →Snap Flash Vanish — The Blackjack Harrigan Files, No. 3 — 20 October 2026. Ink Frame Cut — No. 4 — 1 December 2026. Further titles, and further authors, to follow.
IV Rights & Enquiries
For rights, permissions, and press enquiries, write to enquiries@quoinformepress.com.
We do not accept unsolicited submissions.