Well, Richard offered me three paragraphs to cover the various challenges-i-mean-opportunities presented in setting up a new company, which is clearly not quite enough. Instead I thought I would offer a few of the stages that we went through prior to becoming TFP proper and hopefully Richard will allow me the space later to elaborate.

1. Plan. In March 2005 I went to Anthony Cheetham with a forward list. Yes, just a forward list. Most people in publishing know that Anthony is an experienced publishing entrepreneur, but to look at a list and see an entire business is a skill that Anthony has for which I am extremely grateful.
2. Money. A great idea is not enough. You apparently need to put your money where your mouth is so I remortgaged my house. No, no, please don’t worry about Jake, 5 and Edie 3 – the cardboard box is fine.
3. People. All of a sudden there is an office and some contracts with authors and you’re in business. The office is good as it means there is an option beyond the cardboard box but we do have to pay for it and all of a sudden we have people in it. They are ‘staff’. Another terrifying concept, for me at least.

I’m not oversimplifying. A plan, money and people is really all that you need to start a publishing company, or any company, and this is where I found myself a few months ago.

At this stage though, I found myself with some great books (in theory at least) but no sales and distribution channel. I looked at a few distribution options but they were expensive and not very satisfactory. We went to Macmillan and were lucky enough to be accepted onto their third-party sales and distribution system, but what would we have done otherwise? What should we have done? What would you do? As a bookshop, does it matter? As a Publisher, does it? As a consumer I guess it makes no difference? Is there an alternative?

I’ve failed to squeeze even a fraction of the issues I face as a new publisher into this post so I started with this initial one. I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts on the distribution issue. There are a million and one other things we face every day as a new start-up. I might cover them at www.thefridayproject.co.uk/vox but perhaps Richard might allow me to mention them here too. Who knows?