Interview With Publisher Philippa Roberts
Suite 101 Chats to the Owner and Founder of Fractal Publishing
Apr 17, 2009
What is the best thing so far about having your own publishing company?
I think the thing I like best is receiving feedback from people about how much they enjoyed it. Many people have told me that they have picked the books up and read them from cover to cover, which is exactly what I did myself. I think my deepest motivation, both in writing and in publishing is the desire to give, and this has been very deeply satisfied.
Do you have any advice for anyone thinking of setting up their own publishing company?
I would almost say don’t! I must admit that I began with a huge handicap as I had been seriously ill for many years before I started it and was already in debt. I could have spent the rest of my life paying off the money slowly, or I could borrow more and invest it in forming a publishing company. Doing what I did was in many ways an act of blind courage. Anything like that should only be done if you feel that the book is likely to sell to big institutions like schools and universities, and ideally you should contact the big suppliers to see if it would interest them before you do it. I’ve been lucky my instinct was right, but I might not have been.
One of the latest books published by your company Fractal Publishing was quite different from your usual poetry niche. Tell us about the Guide for New Workers in Great Britain.
This book was actually written by my sister, Miriam Roberts. I hadn’t intended to keep the work in the family but this was honestly the best proposal anyone gave me. She had worked for the International Student House in London and had written student guides to London, so she had the necessary experience. She pointed out how badly a guide was needed for migrant workers, as, at that time there was almost nothing. We first did it for our own area (Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire) but the following year we covered the whole of the UK. Last year we also produced a Polish edition, but we are finding that other people now have picked up on the idea and have far more resources to invest in promotion, so we may not continue it in future years. We are looking at the possibility of doing it in other languages.
You have quite a diversity in your specialist areas and also write scripts. How do you get your inspiration in script writing?
I never have to look for inspiration. I have so many ideas that my problem is always deciding what to do first! I have written since I was a child and it really is a vocation for me. The script writing was almost an accident. I was invited to read some of the poems in our first book, A Wartime Poetry Journal, for a scriptwriting group at our local theatre. They were writing scripts about the Second World War and the organizer thought the book would help them.
I immediately got interested, as a writer, and wrote a short script for them. It was chosen and performed, and has recently been published by Lazy Bee Scripts. I also wrote a monologue which is about a woman talking into her mobile phone on the bus. This was directly inspired by listening to people on buses. I do get very annoyed about people having long phone conversations as it really interferes with my creative/ thinking time, but in this event I put it to good use! That script is also available to purchase from Lazy Bee.
You are perhaps best known to children in the United Kingdom as “Ziggy Rabbit”. Why is this?
I started the Ziggy Rabbit Reading schemes. Ziggy Rabbit chooses books for children, individually, according to their particular interests. The children keep in email contact with Ziggy, and discuss the books with her. It is excellent, not only for English children but for children learning English as a foreign language.
Although the club was a huge hit with its members I did not have enough money to invest in a lot of promotion, so it remained quite small scale. Also, for the last year I have had huge problems with the website people I employed. I have now decided to pass the reading schemes over to someone else (a very creative and lively woman called Alexes who knows how to do websites) - but I will continue to support them in every way possible.
Last of all, what has been the proudest moment of your writing or publishing career so far?
I think the proudest moment of all was when I sat holding the complete works of my grandmother’s poems in my hands. It made me more proud than any of my own writing successes because, with my own work I am always moving on mentally to what I will do next. This, however, was an ending, and a beautiful one.
Visit the Fractal Publishing website to buy the interesting book Guide for New Workers in Great Britain or any of the books mentioned in this interview.
Philippa also talked to Suite 101 about the poems of a World War II Housewife which became accessible to the public thanks to Fractal Publishing.
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