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Why
did we start up?
The
word was that since Harry Potter and Bridget Jones, people were
reading books again.
But publishers didn’t seem to understand why Harry and Bridget
were so popular. Instead of looking for rollicking good stories,
editors were opting for celeb autobiographies, politicians’
diaries and children’s books written by people too famous to
change their own kids’ nappies.
Meanwhile, new novelists had to be cute, hip and preferably under
21.
We thought that some readers might still be more interested in novelists’
words than their publicity photos. So we started looking round for
good stories, without asking for authors’ mugshots.
And we kept hearing the same thing: “I found an agent who loved
my novel, but he/she just couldn’t sell it.” Sometimes
the agents had been helping with editing and rewrites, doing the
work that editors used to do before they were told that books were
now just celeb by-products.
And the really scary thing was that one of our favourite finds was
written by a guy of 27 who turned out to be
pretty cute.
So if the cuties couldn’t get published any more, action was
desperately needed.
We chose three novels and decided to publish them immediately.
They’re all comedies, because the world needs a laugh. But
they’re comedies with a message, rollicking good stories that
will make readers laugh, think, and want to read more.
We don’t want readers to get disheartened by the stream
of media-driven word candy taking up so much space on booksellers’
shelves.
We’re small, we don’t have massive marketing budgets,
and our authors aren’t famous enough to create publicity for
their books by dating a pop star. We’d ask them to trash a
restaurant or two but we can’t afford the insurance.
We’d
like people to buy the stories because they’re good stories.
Pathetically
naive, we know. Comic, even.
Check
out our first three titles
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