untitled • 15 August 2007 • The SnowBlog

untitled

          What do you do? Job-wise? Are you happy? Fulfilled? 

Back in the midsts of time, Rob Jones and I started Snowbooks. Lots of people say 'ooh, aren't you brave?' Truth is, it wasn't brave at all - it was the only possible solution to our misery. We were stuck in jobs we hated, doing work we found pointless, with colleagues we couldn't respect and with no practical output. As management consultants, we wrote powerpoint presentations and tried to sell false promises to corporations. We didn't *do* anything, or *make* anything. It's a bleak, soul-crushing way to live. 

We started a publishing company because we wanted to do something that mattered - and given a choice of creating any product in the world, few matter more than books. Four years on, it's all going rather well. But looking to the future, we have a nagging doubt. If doing something to make a difference matters so much to us, are we sure that being a publisher is enough? 

The problem centres around what, exactly, a publisher does. We don't manufacture books -  we outsource that to printers. We don't warehouse or distribute our books, or process orders and payments - the wonderful LBS does that for us.  
Emma