Tom Walker is publishing director of The Folio Society.Illustrating the extraordinary global reach of The Folio Society, they received 733 submissions from 58 countries across five continents, from which 20 outstanding illustrations were selected for the longlist. We are committed to creating a sustainable business and we’re determined to have fun along the way, keeping the flame of publishing books of craft and beauty alive. Perhaps paradoxically for a 75-year-old business, Folio is always looking forward. This coming autumn we are publishing a spectacular edition of The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare, the binding of which is being woven in Sussex as I write! From The Lord of the Rings and Dune, to Dante’s The Divine Comedy, the range is now as broad as our core list. In the last few years that imprint has gained a cult-like status of its own, with the editions regularly selling out within days, sometimes even hours.
We work with an increasingly diverse range of contributors across our publishing program, and in this last year we have published authors ranging from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Zora Neale Hurston introducers from Kwame Dawes to Walter Mosley and illustrators from Diana Ejaita to Unyime Edet.Īlongside our core list we have developed a highly successful range of limited editions.
#Folio books online update#
Our upcoming list for summer, for example, includes classics by Mark Twain and Dodie Smith, alongside new editions of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting Jhumpa Lahiri’s amazing short-story collection, Interpreter of Maladies and Carlo Rovelli’s poetry of physics, The Order of Time.įolio is increasingly ambitious in its drive to publish the world’s biggest literary estates and authors, but publishing a high-profile list brings with it a responsibility to update the definition of what a classic work is. In recent years we have been exploring science fiction and fantasy, horror, thrillers, and romance, alongside the literary canon. This has also created a big shift in our demographic appeal: 25- to 45-year-olds now make up almost half of our audience. That allows us to have a direct relationship with our readers and to access deep wells of cult fandom. We find our customers digitally, and sell to them directly and exclusively through our website, controlling all aspects of the delivery chain. We are an international publisher and our biggest market is now the U.S. Our recent wins at the British Book Design and Production Awards not only showed the range and depth of our publishing but how we can innovate and stretch the possibilities of the printed book. The industry is going through a golden period of book design, and to be at the forefront of that is a welcome challenge as well as a privilege. The process of making a Folio book is a joyful one, and we have a team that cares about every detail, working with illustrators, designers, cutting-edge technicians, and traditional craftspeople in order to achieve it. This keeps Folio independent, and has focused us all on our mission to create the world’s finest books. Having been owned by the Gavron family since the early 1980s, in the last year Folio made the shift to becoming an Employee Owned Trust (EOT), whereby the business is owned equally by the people who work in it. It is a privilege to be part of that continuous thread, but for me the challenge–and the fun of it–is in keeping Folio forward-looking, progressive, and relevant to new audiences. This last year has seen Folio hit the milestone of 75 years of publishing, and it has transformed since I started as publishing director eight years ago–from the business model, to the ownership structure, right down to the offices themselves.
0 kommentar(er)
