Recently Tale Publishing was invited to meet with a local community writing group about a potential partnership. They’d heard about our work with the Monash Writers Group* (who have a new anthology being launched in February) and wondered if we could work together on a new project. The project is subject to a grant application so while we’d all like it to come to fruition, it’s not a certainty.

Similarly, at the book launch for Colours of Hope and Despair by Bala Mudaly, we were approached by an author who’d written over three hundred short stories and a novel. He had a new manuscript he thought we might be interested in. We exchanged details and have since received a manuscript which does indeed interest us. Again, it’s not locked in yet but we’re hopeful.

So why are we writing about uncertainties? To answer that we need to go back to Tale Publishing’s beginning.

Recently we had our third anniversary as a Small Press. When we started we set four simple goals:

1. Publish 2 or 3 books per year.
2. Publish stories that have something interesting about them regardless of genre or author experience.
3. Form partnerships that enable our publications to reach the widest possible audience.
4. Be a publisher of choice for authors, retailers and readers.

These anecdotes illustrate how we are meeting the latter two goals which is why we’re mentioning them. We’ve also formed the basic necessity partnerships too: Woodslane (Australia) & Gazelle (Europe and Asia) for distribution, the Small Press Network and Australian Publishers Association as industry groups and Ingram Spark for printing. Additionally, we’ve previously worked with the Krishnamurti Foundation to publish a translation of Beyond Violence, but things like potential community partnerships signify a degree of growth and recognition which is encouraging. As for the former two goals, they’re being met too. We’ve published four books a year, from a mix of previously published authors and first timers, who’ve written in genres including memoir, urban fantasy, satire, speculative fiction, literary and non-fiction.

We’re still young and still finding our place in the publishing world, but it’s nice to think we’re building some momentum and meeting the targets we set ourselves when we were founded. Here’s to the next three years!

* Tale Publishing was founded by members of this group and also published their previous anthology, The View from the Hill.