luke C.
Wasted my time and money
I am a published author and accomplished entrepreneur. I was working with another publisher on other books; they did good work but were costly. So I thought I would try Atmosphere to save money. They did well enough through the editing process but at design, they went bad. This particular book was scientific with some graphs, lists and images; and they failed to present this data in consistent ways and then failed repeatedly, when prompted to improve and given notes. I went to the direct manager, then the next level manager--but they did not show any interests in remedying the situation. So I terminated the contract and lost money and time. If your book is simple, this service may work for you--but if complex, and requiring greater skill, probably not.
Response from Atmosphere PressFeb 17, 2026
We were surprised to see this message from Luke, as he'd earlier stated that the "book is looking good" after we sent him the first round of designs. After that, there were a number of rounds of back and forth to try to dial in the design, and that's commonplace; all publishers go through multiple rounds of revision when it comes to interior design. It was our hope to continue this process until the interior was up to Luke's standards, but then he wrote to say he'd started working with a different press and wanted to terminate our contract. That's absolutely his prerogative---authors always retain the right to discontinue the relationship---but we are confident that persevering with the revision process would have led to a beautiful book. Also, we do want to note that we've successfully published *many* books with very complicated interior designs, including charts, graphs, images, captions, illustrations, lists, you name it. Our interior design team has dozens and dozens of years of combined experience. It's a shame we weren't able to see this project through with Luke, but we do hope his book is successful with his new publisher!