An independent press
Straight
Face Press™
We publish books that keep a straight face. What’s on the page is the argument; what you make of it is yours.
A True Story
Mark Twain set down, almost word for word, the account of a woman who had been enslaved and separated from her children, and who found her son again after the war. Told in her own voice, it is the most serious story in the set. R. M. Hume’s illustrated edition arrives on Kindle October 11.
A small publisher with a narrow remit.
Straight Face Press is an independent publisher based in North Carolina. It puts out illustrated editions of public-domain work and original nonfiction, in small numbers, under two bylines.
The name is the method. Keeping a straight face doesn’t mean the book is humourless or neutral, only that it sets the thing down and lets you decide what to do about it, without telling you which way to lean before you’ve read the evidence.
Two bylines
R. M. Hume
The literary byline
Old stories, redrawn. Plus the occasional case study in why people believed the wrong thing for so long.
D. M. Faraday
The analytical byline
Money and systems, argued in the open, with the sources shown and the verdicts left to you.
On how the books are made
Every title is written, edited, and assembled by a person. Where AI tools are used in production, the book says so, in the book. We’d rather tell you than have you wonder.