As any small, independent publisher will tell you, the work they do is largely a labour of love. What drives us? There’s probably as many different reasons as there are publishers, but we’re fairly confident that first and foremost among them is a passion for seeing good stories – which might otherwise never see the light of day – get their chance to find their audience.
In honesty though, the rewards rarely match the work involved. Publishers know this, and still we do what we do. Maybe that’s down to blind faith and ignorance, and if ever an auditor or bean-counter presented us with a spreadsheet of hours put in against money gained as a result of those hours, the scales would fall from our eyes and we’d chuck it all in for a better-paid job stacking shelves in Aldi. But I doubt it. Because we’re not measuring the success of what we do purely by the cold, dead numbers on a balance sheet. Passion and engagement and bloody-mindedness figure in there too, and as soon as you add them to the equation the spreadsheet becomes a different beast entirely.
None of this means we don’t dream of, or aim for, success. While passion may keep us going, you don’t have to be in this game long to realise that passion plus money is a sweeter combination. And the satisfaction that comes from having backed a book which no-one else had taken on, and then seeing that book come good… That’s unbelievably pleasing.
Which is why we’re overjoyed to be starting sales of the fourth print run of City Baby. We knew when we first sent the proofs to the printers that Ross’s story was an absolute cracker, but we never expected it to enter a fourth print run – and have a US editionlaunched as well – within two years of its original publication*. That is truly something worth celebrating. And something we’ll remind ourselves to remember next time the balance sheet looms large.
*If you’re wondering what’s so special about the story of a punk rocker from Birmingham, then we can only suggest you read the reviews, and then buy the book. You won’t regret it.
