About Publishing and Change: a guest post from Woolly Wormhead.

Arbour House Publishing have been lucky enough to work with and publish Woolly Wormhead's marvellous hat knitting books for a number of years now. Sadly, the decision has recently, jointly, and amicably been made that we are not going to be publishing Woolly's books anymore.  

Woolly has written about it very eloquently on her own blog, and has kindly allowed us to repost her words here.


About publishing, and change.

Friday, April 1, 2011 at 4:49PM

 

Some of you may remember when I started working with Arbour House Publishing a few years ago. Having first published Going Straight through Lulu, the chance to work with a small publisher couldn't be missed.

And they have been wonderful to work with – they've allowed me creative freedom, we've had many informative discussions about layout and content, and they have enabled my books to reach a whole world of knitters who had no idea my designs existed. Being a small, ethically led company, they've taught me much about the behind the scenes concerns of publishing, much of which most of us don't see, and how that can impact the side of business that we do see. Over this time we've developed an unusual and strong relationship, one that is unique to the publishing world, and one that has allowed us to develop our strengths without compromise. And it's allowed the friendship between Susan and myself to grow.

Sadly, we now need to tell you that we aren't able to carry on as we are, and that Arbour House will no longer be publishing my books.

After much discussion, we can't find a practical way to go forward. Because of our unique relationship, which allows me to maintain the rights to my work, I'm a low profit author for them. With all 3 books due for reprinting, and a 4^th one due for release, the investment needed to keep all books in print at a reasonable wholesale cost would have been difficult. Had the investment been made, neither of us would have earnt anything from the books for many months, if not years, with Arbour House running at a loss for a period of time, and that to me didn't sound like the best business investment. Arbour House aren't a big corporate publisher, they are small, independent one with limited funding, funding that I felt would be better spent elsewhere. After tentative discussions with Susan, we both agreed that this was the best way forward. It's best for both businesses, the risk is reduced, and there won't be a strain on our friendship.

The last week or so has been difficult, but as the dust has settled, it's clear that we've done the right thing. Susan and her family are coming over in May for a visit and it's going to be lovely to spend time together and have a real holiday without the need to talk about business.

Going forward, I've been working on a plan or two. I was thrown into a bit of a tizz for a few days, trying to get my head around the available options but it's starting to come together. And ironically, I'll be going back to POD, at least for a while.

CreateSpace is an Amazon owned company, with very competitive printing costs for full colour books. They will get my books onto Amazon, into certain distribution outlets in North America, and wholesale to stores will also be possible. As much as it seems like a backwards step, going from a small independent to a corporate giant, it's the best thing to do right now. Sometimes, we're not in a position to make the decisions that please our inner moral code.

I'm not sure yet whether this will be the long term plan, but for now, it will keep my books available in print. There are a few more things that need to be done before they will be available for sale, and once those are done, I'll be able to direct you to where you'll be able to purchase them.

This change has bought about a huge amount of work, most of which isn't visible on the surface. I hope you can appreciate our reasons, and bear with me while I get a few things straightened out.

  

From: Woolly Wormhead, 

Susan, Gavin and Ingrid, the Arbour House team

Unravel and the Launch of Something Exciting!

It's the knitting festival, Unravel this weekend in beautiful Farnham in Hampshire... and we're going to be there!

If you haven't been lucky enough to attend before, Unravel is a three floor smorgasbord of knitting, spinning and crocheting goodies, plus talks, demonstrations and classes on all manner of knitting related stuff. It is all set in the Farnham Maltings, a beautiful old building by the river which is now used as an arts centre.

Susan, Gavin and I will all be there on both Saturday and Sunday manning our stand. This year we are lucky enough to be downstairs in the Great Hall and our stand will be trading as Arbour House Publishing and Susan Crawford Vintage, rather than knitonthenet itself.

Susan will be giving a really useful talk on Sunday morning about how to best choose yarns to knit your vintage patterns with. It's a subject that is very interesting and really important if you want to get your vintage clothing to fit and drape properly.

As for the launch of something exciting... well it all links in with finding that right yarn. Susan and John Arbon have been working hard on a stunning new range of vintage-inspired wool called Excelana. It is spun from 100% British wool from a sheep called the Exmoor Blueface. This sheep's fleece is wonderfully lustrous, and the resulting wool has a soft handle, lots of stretch and knits up with brilliant stitch definition. Sounds brilliant, doesn't it?

  Gavin explains a little further:

Excelana is the result of an exciting collaboration between John Arbon of Fibre Harvest andyou a luxurious knitting yarn evoking vintage wools from the ‘Golden Age of Knitting’. Susan Crawford, the knitwear designer and author, bringing

As well as being derived from British sheep, Excelana is processed and spun in Devon by John Arbon of Fibre Harvest, at Coldharbour Mill, which is one of only a handful of worsted fibre processing and spinning plants still operating in the UK.

Excelana is available in eight vintage-inspired shades, carefully chosen by Susan herself to be a fully complementary range. The four weights of 4ply, Double Knitting, Aran and (very excitingly for vintage knitters) 3ply are available in the following colours:

Alabaster · Nile Green · Cornflower Blue · Persian Grey
Ruby Red · Saharan Sand · French Rose · Powdered Egg

Sounds good, doesn't it? You can come and squish some Excelana and be the first to buy it at Unravel this weekend. I'm certainly going to be getting some in to start the swatches on the forthcoming book on socks that Susan and I are currently writing and I know that Susan is going to be using it for some of the patterns in the eagerly anticipated A Stitch in Time volume 2.

There are still tickets available from the Unravel site and you can also buy them on the door. We really hope to see you there - do come and say hello!


Happy knitting
Ingrid x