At the beginning of March, I went to a party given by Francis Wheen and his partner Julia Jones to celebrate the publication of Julia’s wonderful biography of the crime writer Margery Allingham. It was held at Foyle’s on Charing Cross Road; there was nice wine and good wholesome food. And the party was very generously bankrolled by the book’s publisher, Golden Duck (aka Francis Wheen and Julia Jones).
Julia’s book was first published in 1991 by Heinemann. It was universally well-received, got rave reviews and sold out its print run.
More recently new material came to light and Julia decided that the book needed updating and revising. But like many authors, she didn’t want to trawl round publishers and agents trying to convince someone that it was a worthwhile commercial venture. So she and Wheen decided to go it alone – on the back of 900 copies of The Adventures of Margery Allingham, Golden Duck publishing was born, with more titles promised to follow.
Given the margins for books, it is a surprise that more authors are not publishing themselves. Several years ago I had lunch with a headhunter called George Courtauld. As charming as he was, I thought him quite potty. He had been turned down by a lot of mainstream publishers and had just self-published a book, printing 10,000 copies of The Pocket Book of Patriotism. He wanted my advice on how to promote it. The book had evolved from a poster Courtauld had designed for his young children that featured key events in history. It was tub-thumping stuff and I am afraid, to my eternal shame and embarrassment, I told Courtauld that the best chance he had was to try and shift the book in bulk to the UK Independence Party.
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