You may know that I decided to enter the world of publishing, in memory of my wife, when I was 70 years old.
At that point, I had of course no previous experience of publishing at all.
So, by the time I had learned a little and had officially entered the industry, I was 71 – Salt Desert was started on November the 25th, 2019. Given what I saw as the darkening social and political environment around the world, I decided to focus on nurturing democratic and humane values around the world – though “my” authors hold differing and even contrasting political, religious, social, economic, and technological views.
When did I actually start in the industry? Well, perhaps you can tell me exactly when is a child born?! Anyway, I date my start in the industry to August the 31st 2020, with the publication of my first title – Avay Shukla’s PolyTicks, DeMocKrazy & MumboJumbo: Babus, Mantris & Netas (Un)Making our Nation
Remarkably, within a year after I started the publishing company in the U.K., the titles started being distributed in India and in sixteen other Asian countries by Penguin Random House India. In the UK and Europe, my titles are distributed by Marston, the largest distributor of English-language books in this part of the world. And they are distributed in Canada and the USA by Trafalgar Square Press/ Independent Publishers Guild, the largest North American importer of the titles of U.K. publishers. That is an enviable distribution network, much larger than has been established by very much older-established publishers, so it is no surprise that self-published authors as well as independent publishers have already started coming to us for global distribution of their books (so far, these are from the UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, and Kuwait – discussions are underway with others).
My first imprint, named of course after my late wife, Pippa Rann Books, focuses exclusively on India and on the Indian diaspora, covering biography and memoir, business & technology, fiction, health and ageing, philosophy and religion, poetry, and political satire.
My second imprint, Global Resilience Publishing, explores global difficulties and opportunities – for example:
- the challenges to freedom
- climate change preparedness
- corporate governance
- the ethics of technology
- the global financial system
- the growth of democracy
Overall, the progress of my publishing over these short years, can be summed up by the following highlights:
*Two of my books have won prizes (one of them, Anthropocene, was adjudged Joint Winner of a US10,000 prize from a US foundation);
*Another of my authors, Satish Kumar, has been awarded the Bicentenary Medal of the U.K.’s Royal Society of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce;
*Six of my titles have gone into reprint;
*One of my titles, Regenerative Learning, has a Foreword by H. H. the Pope; another, Mantras for Positive Ageing, has a Foreword by H.H. the Dalai Lama; still another, My Silk Road, has a Foreword by the U.K. celebrity, Dame Prue Leith; and yet another, PolyTicks, DeMocKrazy & MumboJumbo has a Foreword by Dr. Shashi Tharoor;
*Two of my titles are going into translation (The Village Maestro & 100 Other Stories into Arabic; Regenerative Learning into German);
*My books are being featured in international festivals such as the Birmingham Literature Festival, the Green Gathering, the Jaipur Literature Festival and the Kerala Literature Festival; and by major institutions such as the Sahitya Akademi, Indian International Centre (Delhi), and the Indian National School of Drama.
*Selected titles should, God willing, start going into audiobooks in 2024;
*While entirely rejecting the influence of Artificial Intelligence in favour of Natural Intelligence in the content of any of our books, I am trying to keep up with new technology – in fact, my titles are some of the very first in the world to have gone into “gamification” – see, e.g., the two URLs, RedCards | Open app and RedCards | Open app
I remain acutely conscious of all that is still lacking, and of all the miles this little publishing house must travel before it can be considered as anything like established – though I hope you may be a little encouraged by this look back, from today’s vantage point, both over its beginnings, and over the distance that it has travelled.