Every collector knows the feeling. You go looking for a reference on something specific — the production variants of one camouflage pattern, the kit carried by one unit in one campaign, the evolution of a service rifle across four decades — and the book simply doesn’t exist. What exists instead is a forum thread from 2011, a few blurry auction photos, and somebody’s half-remembered account of what his uncle wore.
That gap is why Safar Publishing exists, and it’s why we’re writing this.
Who we are
We are a specialist publishing house built around highly illustrated books on collections of military items. Our major titles cover uniforms, equipment, ordnance and the conflicts they belong to: Uniforms and History of the Soviet Airborne in Afghanistan, Soviet Weapons of the Afghan War, Guardians of Neutrality: Swiss Rifles Through the Ages, and forthcoming work on the Bosnian War of 1992–1995.
What runs through all of it is the same principle: original items, photographed properly, documented by people who actually handle them. Not scanned catalogue plates. Not stock imagery.
And while military subjects are our core, we are not limited to them. If your subject is material culture, a personal archive, or a serious collection of almost any kind, which is visually rich and well researched — we want to hear about it.
What we’re looking for
A subject you know and access to the physical objects – enough material to carry a book that is meant to be looked at as much as read.
You do not need a finished manuscript. A clear proposal, a subject outline and a sense of what you can photograph is enough to start a conversation. You do not need previous publishing credits either — several of our authors came to us as collectors first and writers second.
What is not a fit: text-only military history with no visual dimension. There are excellent publishers for that, and we can advise on that.
What we bring
We produce books end to end rather than simply printing them. That means an in-house photographer who can shoot your collection to reference standard, professional layout and typesetting, editorial support, collector-grade print production, and global distribution and marketing. We also have real crowdfunding experience, both our own campaigns and others’ — which for niche subjects is often the difference between a book that happens and a book that stays a folder of photos on a harddrive.
Pitch us
If you’ve been sitting on a collection and a subject nobody has covered properly, send us an outline: www.safar-publishing.com/write-with-us or simply email [email protected].
The reference book you can’t find might be the one you’re supposed to write.
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