MEET THE CONSULTANT
Dave Palmer
Bestselling independent author · Publishing consultant · Founder, DPC
Dave didn't build this consultancy as a business idea. He built it
because he knew — from hard, personal experience — that
independent authors deserved better: fairer pricing, honest advice,
and the same professional results that traditionally published authors take for granted. Everything DPC does flows from that original frustration, and from what he learned by solving it himself.
5 published titles
1M+ KDP page reads / yr
Amazon KDP specialist
Ingram Spark specialist
AUTHOR PROOF BY NUMBERS
5
Books published under his own name
all available in print & digital
1M+
KDP Kindle page reads per year
from Dave's personal author account
1,000s
Physical copies sold
annually
across all print editions
50+
Client books published through DPC
and growing every month
DAVE'S STORY
The story behind the consultancy
CHAPTER ONE
From reader to writer
Books were always part of Dave's world. Growing up, he read everything he could find — fiction, history, biography — and carried a quiet, persistent sense that there were stories he wanted to tell. For a long time, the idea of actually writing a book felt like something that happened to other people: people with literary connections, the right education, or some innate permission he hadn't been issued. Then, in his late thirties, he stopped waiting for permission and started writing. No agent, no publisher, no plan — just a story that needed to come out, and the discipline to see it through.
CHAPTER TWO
Publishing the hard way
His first experience of the publishing industry was a lesson he'd rather have learned more cheaply. After the predictable round of rejections from traditional publishers, he was approached by a company offering to "help" him publish — for a substantial upfront fee. He paid it. The book appeared, eventually, but the quality was mediocre, the royalties were a fraction of what they should have been, and the experience left him feeling processed rather than supported. "I didn't know what I didn't know," he says now. "And they were very good at keeping it that way." It was the experience that shaped everything that came after — including a determination never to run a business the same way.
CHAPTER THREE
Finding what works
After that first experience, Dave decided to understand publishing from the inside out. He spent months learning Amazon KDP properly — how the algorithms worked, how Kindle Unlimited page reads translated into meaningful income, how metadata and category selection could determine whether a book was discoverable or invisible. He taught himself typesetting, found collaborators he trusted for cover design, and began uploading his own titles. The results changed everything. Within a few years, his books were generating thousands of physical sales annually and over a million KDP page reads per year — numbers that put him firmly in the top tier of independent authors on the platform.
CHAPTER FOUR
Deciding to help others
The moment that crystallised DPC came when a fellow author — someone with a genuinely brilliant manuscript — showed Dave a contract he'd been offered by a hybrid publisher. The fees were steep, the rights clause was buried in the small print, and the royalty split was, frankly, insulting. Dave helped him understand what he'd been asked to sign, and then helped him find a route to publication that actually served his interests. "I realised that what felt obvious to me — because I'd learned it the painful way — was completely invisible to most authors," he says. "And people were being taken advantage of because of that gap." Dave Palmer Consulting was founded specifically to close it.
"Independent publishing, done properly, is not a compromise. It is the best route to market for most authors — if they have the right
support behind them. That's what I set out to build, and that's what I'm still building."
— Dave Palmer, Founder & Consultant
DAVE'S FIVE BOOKS
Five titles published independently
each one a live demonstration of what's possible when you own your publishing process and know how to use the
platforms properly.
WHY DAVE BUILT THIS
Why Dave built this — and how it shapes everything DPC does
DPC wasn't founded to be another publishing service. It was founded to fix specific, identifiable things that are broken about the way independent authors are treated.
Authors must keep their rights
Dave signed away more than he should have on his first publishing deal. He built DPC so that would never happen to a client. You wrote it — you own it, permanently
and without condition.
Pricing must be transparent
Hidden costs and inflated packages were the pattern Dave saw again and again. Every DPC quote is written, itemised and agreed before any work begins. There are
no surprises, no upsells mid-project.
Quality that stands up anywhere
Dave's benchmark is a book that could sit next to a traditionally published title on any shelf without looking out of place. Not "good enough for self-publishing" —
genuinely, commercially professional.
Advice from lived experience only
DPC only advises on approaches Dave has used himself. He won't recommend a platform, format or strategy he hasn't tested under his own name, with his own
money and reputation at stake.
No forced packages
Authors have different manuscripts at different stages. Every DPC engagement is built from the ground up. You pay only for what you actually need — not a bundle
that suits DPC's workflow.
Care beyond the contract
Dave remains genuinely interested in how a client's book performs after publication. The relationship doesn't end at delivery. A client's success reflects on DPC — and
that's taken seriously.
PUBLISHING PHILOSOPHY
Dave's approach to publishing
What does it mean to publish well? After five books and well over fifty client projects, my answer is this: publishing well means the reader gets a book that doesn't apologise for being independently made. It means the author keeps what they've earned — in money, in rights, in creative control. And it means the whole process was honest from the first conversation to the final upload.
The publishing industry has spent decades making authors feel grateful just to be published at all. I understand how that dynamic formed — gatekeepers accumulate power — but it's always been the wrong way around. Authors are the people with the ideas, the discipline and the creative vision. Publishers, at their best, are in service of that. When the relationship inverts, when authors are treated as customers rather than creators, something goes wrong at every level. The book is worse. The experience is worse. And the author's relationship with their own work becomes transactional and diminished.
I built DPC around a simple belief: that an independent author with the right support can produce a book indistinguishable from anything put out by a major house. I know this because I've done it, and because I've helped others do it too. I also know the difference between what that genuinely costs to do well and what some companies charge to do it badly. That gap is where this business lives — and where I intend it to stay.
1
Every book has a reader it was meant for. The job of publishing is simply to connect them.
2
Professional quality isn't a luxury reserved for traditionally published books. It's the minimum any reader deserves.
3
An author's success and their publisher's success should be exactly the same thing — not in tension with each other.
4
Transparency builds trust. If I wouldn't put my name behind the advice, I won't give it.
5
Good publishing takes the time it takes. Rushing it serves nobody — least of all the author.
A free consultation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Ready to work with someone who's been exactly where you are?
Tell Dave about your manuscript and where you're up to — and he'll give you an honest, clear picture of what your book needs and what it will cost. No packages. No pressure. Just straight advice from someone who's done it.
