Book publishing services are usually just self-publishing companies that do the legwork for a fee. But in a nutshell, the publishing industry includes the development, marketing, production and distribution of news and non-fiction magazines and books, literary works and other works dealing with dissemination of information. Although newspaper and magazine companies often own printing presses and binderies, most of the book publishing companies outsource the production and development work to smaller companies and only control the advertising and marketing tasks. Some of the publishing companies sub-contract the editorial work as well. These companies offering specialized book publishing services are also an integral part of the ever-growing publishing industry in the US.

Some of the book publishing services companies like Cader Books, Benchmark Productions, iUniverse Inc. and Xlibris offer specialized services at every stage of book publishing like researching topics and assisting authors. They also offer editing services, designing the layout, artwork and photography, cover layout, bar coding and the final printing and distribution of books. Each service has a fee and can be customized according to the clients need.

A number of publishing service companies offer counseling services to help self-publishers. They include theme planning, book formatting, business plan advice and copyright information. Other specialized services include manuscript evaluation and critiquing, as well as suggestions as to how to develop the manuscript and make it saleable in the market. The publishing services also include ISBN acquisition and CIP data acquisition that are mainly used to assign a unique number to the published books and to help catalog the books.