About Mensch Publishing

The Rules

There would be no mission statement. There would be no editorial strategy. The focus would not be on profit but on publishing authors fairly and successfully and thus building an intellectual property asset over time. Occam’s Razor would be applied wherever possible. In addition Sir Stanley Unwin’s first duty of a publisher to stay in business would be followed.

Accounting would be cash based – no provisions, no depreciation of assets, simply cash in versus cash out and measured daily by the health or otherwise of a dedicated bank account. Invoices would be paid on receipt into the supplier’s bank account same day, be they printers, distributors, freelance editors, designers, publicists, HMRC or authors. Apart from being fair (menschlich) it also saved me a lot of administrative hassle remembering to pay, it cost me little in today’s low-interest world, and it bought me good will (I hope). If only my creditors would pay me on those same terms (a forlorn hope).

Author contracts would be fair but on my terms not those widely used in the traditional general book publishing world – no advance against royalties, royalty percentages based on net income not on cover price but generous, world all language rights, and all other rights (audio, digital, serialisation etc). Quite clearly this wouldn’t attract many authors but it was the only way I could stick to my principles and hope to stay in business.

Staffing would be minimal – an unpaid me. Everything else would be outsourced. In particular, Bloomsbury were willing to handle sales, distribution, rights, and production on my behalf – thank you Bloomsbury.