The curse of the generalist, specialists say, is to believe you can do anything reasonably well. But doing everything is more interesting. whitefox is predicated on the existence of an entire network of specialists, and from the office, we see the whole picture. So you might say we have it both ways.

Going up a level, the space whitefox occupies in the publishing industry as a whole never ceases to fascinate me. We should be as simple and as focussed as we can be. We realise that. If we could do one single thing quicker, better, cheaper than anyone else, we’d be buying a big stake in Snapchat right now just for the hell of it. But all I know is that on one day in August, one day at a time of year when the pace of work is meant to slow down to a summer stroll, we were approached by:

– a Swedish publisher looking for an English translator for a music book

– a national children’s brand wanting a project editor and writer for a marketing campaign

– a business wanting editorial and design support for a self-published e-book series

– a scientific charitable foundation wanting a digital iteration of their forthcoming exhibition catalogue

– a writer based in Singapore wanting a copy-edit for their commercial novel

This isn’t intended as anything other than an opportunity to glory in the diversity of what publishing means to so many different people. Half of this may not even come to anything beyond an initial enquiry. But simply by positioning ourselves at the crossroads between content owners, creators and talented individuals who can answer their questions whitefox has become involved in some wonderful creative projects. It would be rather perverse not to see where it all ends up.