A ghostwriting & personal-brand studio
We write books, build sites, develop apps, and shape your brand. Then we step out of frame. The work goes out under your name. We're just the ink.
Why a studio like this exists
Plenty of accomplished people (a consultant with thirty years in the field, a craftsman with a waiting list, a specialist others quietly rely on) have a real story and no time to tell it. Writing the book, building the site, keeping a presence alive: it's a second job none of them signed up for.
So it stays undone. The expertise is real, but it lives only in the room. Sumiya is the quiet workshop that turns it into something people can hold, read, and find: with your name on it, and ours nowhere.
What we make
We keep the list short on purpose. Each thing below is something we build end to end, hand it over finished, and never put our name near.
Full-length books, manuals, monographs and white papers: researched, written, and ready to self-publish on Amazon KDP under your name.
A site that isn't a brochure: a navigable portfolio where the people interested in you can actually explore your work and your world.
A simple, private system to keep track of the people who matter to your practice: no marketing machine, just quiet order.
A navigable catalogue of your services and products, built so a non-technical client can show it, share it, and gather interest from it.
A single, focused page for a launch, a book, or an idea, made to be understood in one scroll and to bring the right people closer.
Let people reach you and book you straight from your site. A smart contact form that asks the right things the first time.
Collect the people who are genuinely interested and send them something worth opening: occasional, personal, never spam.
The supporting craft: considered typography, the look of the pages, the imagery that makes the whole thing feel like you.
A small app for a trade fair or event: present your products beautifully and capture the interest of everyone who stops by.
The work: a few shapes it takes
That's the whole point. The work we do goes out as our clients' own, so a real portfolio would betray the people who trust us. Instead, here are the kinds of things that leave the workshop, made to look like this, signed by someone else.
A credibility document gathers what you already know into something a client can read in one sitting: the evidence set out plainly, with the working shown rather than asserted.
Figures are drawn from real practice and presented so the conclusion is hard to argue with — quiet authority, on the page.
Selected projects, the thinking behind them, and a quiet way to get in touch — all in one place.
Explore the work →A few times a year, a short note from the workshop: what we've been making, what we've been reading, and the occasional thought worth passing on. No selling, no noise — just a quiet word to the people who care to hear it.
The name
Sumiya is a Japanese word, 墨屋, that means "the house of ink": the workshop where the ink is ground and put to the page. Not the author whose name is on the cover. The quiet place behind it, where the words are made.
Not ink as a liquid, but the sumi stick of calligraphy, ground slowly against stone. The same character lives in sumi-e, ink-wash painting, where a whole landscape is suggested in a few deliberate strokes. Craft that's patient, and invisible in its effort.
The character behind hon-ya (bookshop) and pan-ya (bakery). Adding -ya to a craft names the one devoted to it. The old -ya shops were known by their trade, never by the artisan inside: the work spoke, the maker stayed quiet.
Put together, sumi-ya is the one who works the ink so someone else can sign the page. That, more or less, is the whole idea: you bring the name, we bring the ink.
“The work goes out under your name.
We're proud to be nowhere on it.”
How it works
A simple way of working, made for people who'd rather hand something over than manage a project. You stay in your craft; we stay in ours.
A long, unhurried conversation about your work, your story, and what you'd want people to find. No briefs to fill in.
One clear plan: what we'll make, in what order, under your name. You approve before a word is written.
The grinding of the ink. Writing, building, shaping, with you reviewing as much or as little as you like.
It goes out as yours. Fully owned, fully yours, with a quiet agreement that we were never here.
Start a conversation
Every project starts with a quiet conversation, under no obligation and in complete confidence. Tell us about your work: we'll tell you what we'd make of it.