Our Story

Lang Verhaal started as a simple company with a simple mission: to publish stories. But, over time, we realized the disturbing trend in publishing: almost everyone was white, nearly everyone was straight, and most everyone was male. The problem is that while we wanted our readers to include all of those demographics, we also wanted them to be from all the other races, genders, and sexualities. That’s why we aimed to focus on stories told by those who didn’t necessarily fit into the mold desired by the Big Five Four Publishers.

We also wanted to see if we could find new ways to tell the classics, using the same characters such as Carroll’s Alice or Doyle’s Sherlock but as folks from a diversity of backgrounds and upbringings. Why does every Musketeer be white men when they could be Indonesian women? And in the end, we learned something about ourselves.

We learned that Lang Verhaal is more than a publishing company. We’re a company that tells stories. Our stories may look familiar to most people, but diving into the images and the words, you’ll discover that our stories reflect the diversity of our readers struggling to see themselves in the pages of our favorites.

We want our readers to see new books of struggle, of hope, of overcoming the odds. We tell tales that make our readers pause and reflect on their worldview. We aim to reach everyone with humorous, engaging, uplifting, and insightful books.

Which begs the question: what story are you ready for next?