About Diomedea

Diomedea is the genus of the great albatrosses — birds that cross oceans on almost no visible effort, by reading the wind rather than fighting it. It seemed a fair name for a press interested in skills that look effortless only after the practice is done.

We are a small independent publisher in Güster, in northern Germany. Everything here is made rather than licensed: the drawings are drawn, the classic texts are reset and re-illustrated, and nothing is padded to hit a page count.

Three things we publish

Penmanship. Austin Palmer’s Guide to Business Writing appeared in 1894 and taught a generation to write quickly and legibly by moving from the shoulder rather than the fingers. The method fell out of use once handwriting stopped being a professional necessity, which is a poor reason to lose it. We publish the manual, a modern edition, and workbooks with ruled practice pages — in English and in Spanish.

Coloring books. Every page is drawn by hand. Dinosaurs, pirates, horses, and the Christmas story. The dinosaur book is honest enough about anatomy that a child who genuinely wants to know what a Dilophosaurus looked like is not being fobbed off, and the pirate book gives Anne Bonny, Henry Morgan and Klaus Störtebeker their actual flags.

Illustrated classics. Works whose copyright has long expired but whose worth has not. James Mooney recorded the stories in Myths of the Cherokee among the Eastern Band in the 1880s and 90s; it was published in 1900 as a dense government report. Our edition is newly illustrated and typeset to be read.

Getting in touch

Write to info@diomedea-books.com. There is more detail on the contact page.