May I introduce you to the Handheld Press?

Last week I became a company director, of the Handheld Press, because I’m going to publish books. I’ve been working flat out for several months, doing two jobs at once. Setting up a publishing company takes a lot of administration, as well as starting work, right away! on the first books. I’ve done pretty much every other job in publishing apart from actually BE a publisher, so the editing and the planning now feels entirely natural and normal. ‘Twas not always so.

On a Friday in March, a friend with whom I am editing an academic book, with me in the scary tough editor role, told me (possibly as an affectionate gibe) that I should set up my own publishing company. I spent the weekend muttering ‘nah …..’, ‘well ……’, ‘maybe ……’, ‘but what if ……..’, ‘and I could do …….’, ‘that’d’be a way to do …….’ and ‘what do you think about …..’. The consensus was clear: move ahead cautiously and see what was involved. I knew immediately what I wanted to publish (reprints with proper introductions, scholarly research passions, and science fiction), so I started talking to friends in the business, and friends in business. But the first thing to do was to work out, and then buy, the domain name.

The name Handheld Press took a few days to decide, while I was furiously busy doing other tasks. I’d write down names as they occurred to me, cross them out, take out bits and make new names, cross them all out and start again. Everyone I’ve told the name to has liked it instantly, so I hope it will work for everyone. I wanted the name to suggest tactility, because my books will be books you can hold in your hand, as well as in a handheld e-reader. It also suggests being led by the hand to new and wondrous things, and the pleasing sensation of an object big enough and the right shape for the hand, but not too big, unwieldy or ill-formed. Handheld Press was also a second choice: I really wanted Handheld Books dot co uk, but that domain name had gone, and the only trace of it online was something a little dubious. Handheld Press dot com is a small engineering business in the USA selling metal stamping gadgets. I doubt we’ll interfere with each other’s business. Handheld Press has the advantage of being a press, that can make more things than books. I began to talk to printers.

By the end of March I had added translations from Dutch to my now pleasingly eclectic set of Handheld lists, because I know a translator from Dutch who immediately sent me pages of reprint suggestions to consider, and I have a lot of Dutch and Flemish friends with their own ideas. A month later I was briefing a relation by marriage who just happens to be a typographer and brand identity specialist, because I needed a visual identity and some kind of typographical design to set up a website. Without a website I wouldn’t be able to register at Companies House, and no-one would take me seriously without one. One month and several conversations later Andrew delivered a beautiful brand identity, and I was in business. Website, Twitter, Facebook.

By May I had signed up with the Real Jobs scheme at my university’s design department, and I now have an earnest and impressively focused student designing me a book series. It’ll take time, because this commission is part of his degree portfolio, but I need the time: I have four books and their introductions to edit and proof before I can drop them into layout. (It was around this time that I began recalling everything I ever learned from the designers in English Heritage’s publications department, where I spent some very formative years.) I also have a Handheld Research title ready to publish, but for that I need a proper contract, and a letter of agreement for the reprint introductions. Time to talk to lawyers.

I’m looking for freelance designers (I have a lovely collection of beautifully designed business cards). I also need authors, and they are remarkably easy to encounter. Every conversation I have seems to yield suggestions for books, many of them definitely pursuable. I’ve set up proposal forms for Handheld Classics, Handheld Research and Handheld Translations on the website already, such has been the demand. I’m reading a novel right now by an author I met at a conference, that might be the first title in Handheld Modern.

I’m pleased with the suggestions I’ve had so far for adding to the Handheld Classics. I haven’t pushed the Translations very much yet, or the Handheld Research, because these will take more time and careful planning, though some ideas have been coming through spontaneously. But now I want to read proposals for Handheld Modern, on the modern world and the future. I want to be told about stories by and about the peoples and identities who get told ‘we’ve already got one of those’. I want to hear about feminist science fiction, memoirs of suburban love that dared not speak its name, and stories from countries I’ve never been to, that might not even exist.

Handheld Press is going to be about stories. You can Follow me on the website blog, and I hope you’ll stay with the journey.