One of the joys of being an independent is that there is a short path from submission to publication. If we like a book (like Sadomasochism for Accountants) we will take it on, give it pride of place, and try not to worry that the title has the word sadomasochism in it. Unsurprisingly, we are not mad on sadomasochism (although we do also publish Georges Bataille). 

In fact before Marion Boyars Publishers needed a head, I worked two days a week, doing new business for designers, and even managed to play tennis on Fridays. Quite an ordinary existence, and the word housewife would not be too much of an insult several days a week as a label for me.

Glamor 

Publishing can be quite glamorous, if sporadically. We are invited to parties of all kinds, and are often invited to attend book fairs and sponsored visits in countries across the world in search of new books to translate into English. The London Book Fair sees a huge amount of embassy dos and dinners, and we have an international network of publishing colleagues who we often only see at such events and with whom it's a pleasure to meet up and discuss the industry.

If we are 'quite glamorous', our authors are very glamorous. They hopefully find that being published by us opens their world. We had two authors at the Perth Literary Festival in Australia this year (Maureen Freely and Clotilde Dusoulier). Not only did we sell lots of books, but they met and mingled with authors from all corners of the world, and even used their ‘bathers’ on a boat trip in glorious sunshine in February.

The unglamorous side often is the every day – the database management, posting of review copies, packing up of parcels, editing manuscripts in painstaking detail and designing covers in house, again with huge attention to detail.

We are unusual in that we look after every stage of the book in house – from editing, proof reading to book cover design, marketing material, sales presentations to our reps and to the chain book buyers, and of course, our web site design and blog. We even wrote a book in house last summer. We take turns picking up the phone and opening the post, and log everything manually in books so we know when a submission came in. We’re a blend of a comfortable old slipper, with methods that have been used here for years, and the brand new – we try to buy new programmes for our computers as soon as we can. We have (Kit, anyway!) just mastered Onix so our bibliographic information can be uploaded to all the major book selling companies and library databases in a timely fashion.