A Nod to Subscription Publishing

In March we launched a Kickstarter campaign for our great big humour title Very Heath Robinson and raised £7,581 towards the costs of the book, which was published on 4th May. We are enormously grateful to all those who answered our call and helped us complete ‘Adam’s whopping (1.9 kg), wonderful new book’, as one reviewer has called it, to the standard we intended. We have pleasure in listing them below.

We warmly acknowledge the support of the following:

[widgetkit id=”93″]

We’ve listed the names here as a nod to the days of subscription publishing. In the 18th century subscribers would pay for copies of a book before publication and their names would be printed on the title page, or on the opening pages.

We have a lovely example of this here at the office. On the title page of the 1786 edition of Chambers’ Cyclopaedia some 30 subscribers are listed, among them the publishers William Collins, Thomas Longman and John Murray – names that still resonate today.

It helped if you could number dukes and earls among your patrons, and even better if you could kick off with a King. As far as we are aware we did not attract a titled, let alone a regal clientele. This is okay with us, as we’re just extremely grateful for all the help we received, regardless of precedence!