Craft Focus - December 2020/January 2021 (Issue 82)

77 PROFILE staff, authors and customers throughout the year. But we’ve still been able to mark the anniversary with lots of offers and virtual events across our business and we’re looking forward to properly celebrating sometime in the future. 50 years of history as a business is so important. We have some members of staff who have been here for well over half the company’s existence, so we have expertise, experience and passion for what we do. And I see one of the huge strengths of this business is that it’s a family – it’s a friendly, caring place to work. We’re all committed to producing the very best books on the market and working with our customers in a way that benefits all. Here’s to the next 50 years! Do you distribute books overseas? Export is a very important part of what we do here. In North America we’re distributed by Penguin Random House, the biggest player in that market. The US market is huge for us. We have a sales and marketing office there, and have great relations with the US chains and indies. We also have a warehouse and offices in Australia, which is a buoyant market for us, and sales reps and stock-holding agents throughout the world including South Africa, New Zealand, Middle East and Asia. Essentially, we supply our English language books into markets where the English language is dominant or at least widely used. We also actively look for foreign language partners and have sold rights in our books in over 30 languages. You design books from original idea through to the publishing process, as well as distributing books from other companies, tell us more! Virtually every function of book publishing takes place from within our Kent offices, from initial idea to dispatching finished copies, apart from the actual printing which we do in Asia. Possibly uniquely for a book company of our size, we have our own photographic studio which allows us full control of the instructional illustrations that make our books so unique, and also our own on-site warehouse, allowing us to service consumers, booksellers and art and craft shops around the world quickly and effectively. We’re lucky to have a highly skilled and experienced editorial director, Katie French, who drives our output for us. Her starting point for commissioning a book can be either the subject or the author. So, Katie might identify an emerging trend or a new take on an established subject and then research a suitable author for it, or she might discover a fantastic new artist who is doing amazing work and develop a book idea with them. Whichever route she takes, it begins by spending time getting to know the author, and ultimately developing a clear, shared vision for the book which she then discusses with myself and the other members of the board prior to exchanging contracts. Our books are very much a fusion of author, editor, designer and photographer all working as a team, honing their individual expertise together until the book is born. Our distributed books are very important to us, too. Very often these are specialist, sometimes niche lines that build our ‘one-stop- shop’ craft book offer to our customers. What’s your bestselling title? Historically How to Draw Animals, Ready to Paint: Flowers in Watercolour, 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet and The Overlocker Techniques Manual have been superstar titles virtually from the day they were published and continue to perform strongly. Recent bestsellers have been the phenomenally successful Kawaii titles, notably How to Draw Really Cute Stuff; The Kew Book of Embroidered Flowers; Needle Felting for Beginners; Mabel Bunny; Debbie Shore’s Build a Bag Series (especially Tote and Satchels ) and Sarah Payne’s Quilt School . We’re very lucky in that through publishing for trends rather than fads, we’ve developed a very vibrant backlist that keeps  Bestseller More recent bestsellers