The king is dead
Good bye, Publish and be Damned. Hello, Spire Publishing
06/09/07 22:21 Filed in: Announcements
It was a dark and rainy Saturday afternoon in
November 2002. At the time I lived in London,
England, so nothing out of the ordinary so far. I was
working on a Christmas present for my parents,
designing and writing a cookbook, from recipes
collected from my family. Suddenly I thought that it
would be a really neat idea to actually publish the
book, not just print and bind it. How hard could it
be? So I went online and started researching. And
researching. And researching. There were a handful of
self publishing companies around but they weren't
what I was looking for. Some were too expensive, some
were too far away, some didn't offer features I
wanted. The evening looked like it would end in
frustration.
Then it hit me: Why not start a small publishing company myself. The name for the new venture, Publish and be damned, was decided upon, with the help of half a bottle of red, before bedtime.
The next I went to Companies House and registered a new publishing company, my own. I bought my first set of ISBN numbers later that week and then started looking for a printer. Many listened politely, then started talking about print runs and warehousing and numbers that made no sense whatsoever for me. All I wanted was to publish a book, not to own a warehouse full of paper. However, something else happened during that time. As word got around my circle of friends that I was trying to publish a book, several other authors and designers came forward and asked if, while I was at it, I could publish their books for them too. And after searching for weeks and weeks I finally found a printer who was willing to take my business, on terms that made sense to me.
Publish and be dammed went into overdrive. I joined forces with two partners and together we built a website, a manuscript submission page, a CMS and a bookstore. We all had day jobs but were working all the evening hours we could and we were having a lot of fun. After a year we had published nearly 100 books. What we hadn't done was make any money. In the words of our accountant at the time: "You haven't got a business, you've got a hobby."
Several things happened next. I moved on to live in Canada and my partners decided that they wanted to explore other opportunities. I then got introduced to somebody who had what I didn't have - business sense. That person had just sold a company and was looking for a new challenge. She took a good look at Publish and be damned, decided that it had promise and started to invest both time and money. And on the strength of that new partnership we've moved the company from being a hobby to being a business. The quality of our service went up. We added international distribution, colour printing, managed to lower our prices, increase the quality of our books and still, finally, make a profit. That was several years ago. Since then we've done a lot of growing up and this summer we decided that it was time that this was reflected in a name change.
Many authors had told us that they, while they loved the service, would have preferred a less flippant name. Especially in North America few people know about the Duke of Wellington and how he coined the phrase "Publish and be damned". As a result, Spire Publishing was born. And today we've switched off the servers for pabd.com and all traffic is being forwarded to Spire Publishing. It's the end of an exciting time, and the beginning of something new. Even lower prices, free author websites, more and better self publishing services for the independent author - we're all looking forward to the next five years and I hope you'll join us.
Then it hit me: Why not start a small publishing company myself. The name for the new venture, Publish and be damned, was decided upon, with the help of half a bottle of red, before bedtime.
The next I went to Companies House and registered a new publishing company, my own. I bought my first set of ISBN numbers later that week and then started looking for a printer. Many listened politely, then started talking about print runs and warehousing and numbers that made no sense whatsoever for me. All I wanted was to publish a book, not to own a warehouse full of paper. However, something else happened during that time. As word got around my circle of friends that I was trying to publish a book, several other authors and designers came forward and asked if, while I was at it, I could publish their books for them too. And after searching for weeks and weeks I finally found a printer who was willing to take my business, on terms that made sense to me.
Publish and be dammed went into overdrive. I joined forces with two partners and together we built a website, a manuscript submission page, a CMS and a bookstore. We all had day jobs but were working all the evening hours we could and we were having a lot of fun. After a year we had published nearly 100 books. What we hadn't done was make any money. In the words of our accountant at the time: "You haven't got a business, you've got a hobby."
Several things happened next. I moved on to live in Canada and my partners decided that they wanted to explore other opportunities. I then got introduced to somebody who had what I didn't have - business sense. That person had just sold a company and was looking for a new challenge. She took a good look at Publish and be damned, decided that it had promise and started to invest both time and money. And on the strength of that new partnership we've moved the company from being a hobby to being a business. The quality of our service went up. We added international distribution, colour printing, managed to lower our prices, increase the quality of our books and still, finally, make a profit. That was several years ago. Since then we've done a lot of growing up and this summer we decided that it was time that this was reflected in a name change.
Many authors had told us that they, while they loved the service, would have preferred a less flippant name. Especially in North America few people know about the Duke of Wellington and how he coined the phrase "Publish and be damned". As a result, Spire Publishing was born. And today we've switched off the servers for pabd.com and all traffic is being forwarded to Spire Publishing. It's the end of an exciting time, and the beginning of something new. Even lower prices, free author websites, more and better self publishing services for the independent author - we're all looking forward to the next five years and I hope you'll join us.
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