An independent publisher of middle-grade fiction.
Lordsburg Press publishes books for readers roughly ages 8 to 14. We publish stories built around a simple conviction: young readers are ready for real ideas, and the best way to hand those ideas to them is through a story worth staying up late to finish.
Why we exist
Most books written to "teach" kids about leadership, teamwork, or character end up sounding like the adults who wrote them. They explain. They moralize. They hand down lessons from a height. Kids can smell it a mile away, and they put the book down.
We started Lordsburg Press because we believe the alternative is better. A middle-schooler figuring out who to trust, how to lead without bossing, how to keep a promise when it costs something — that is a story. No framework required. No vocabulary list at the back. Just characters the reader can walk beside, making the kinds of choices the reader is quietly wrestling with in their own life.
What we publish
We publish middle-grade fiction that treats leadership, integrity, and belonging as part of the story, not a message glued on top. Our books draw on ideas from the people who have thought most carefully about how teams work, how trust is built, and how good leaders are made — but those ideas are always lived by the characters, never explained to the reader.
Our flagship series, The Beacon Keepers, follows a group of middle-schoolers who discover that the things that make a lighthouse work — a beacon, a foundation, a shoreline — are the same things that make a person, a team, and a community worth believing in.
Who we're for
We publish for the young reader who wants to matter. For the teacher building a classroom where every kid has a voice. For the parent looking for a book that will start conversations instead of ending them. For the librarian who can tell the difference between a story with something to say and a sermon in a dust jacket.
We are a small press, and we intend to stay that way — small enough to know every book we publish, and every reader we publish it for.