Tag: John Bond

So when is a start-up no longer classified as a start-up? I remember hearing one entrepreneur pose such a question on a conference platform a few years back somewhere in London. And their answer? “I’ll finally say I don’t run a start up when I stop getting asked to speak at events such as this.”

whitefox CEO John Bond takes a newer breed of self-publishing, in the form of illustrated colour projects, into consideration:

When we think of successful indie publishing, there is a synaptic shortcut which takes us quickly to genre fiction, to crime and romance and, inevitably, to Kindle.

Just over three years ago, whitefox was approached by one of the larger on-line freelance marketplaces (they had raised $ millions) to see if we’d be interested in helping them curate the part of their platform that related to publishing. I am assuming at the time a number of requests went out to different sectors. It didn’t happen. We said no. I’ve no idea if anyone said yes. But it got us thinking at the time about the old adage, how does the guy who drives the snow plough get to work in the morning? Or more accurately, who is curating the curators?

In our experience, there are plenty of pure play tech companies merely succeeding in negotiating investment bingo ( if you include the magic words mobile / crowd-funding / marketplace / freemium / data / platform in your ten slide deck ) and lots of seemingly analogue 20th century businesses expanding rapidly, but who may have taken five or more years to prove their particular concept by doing good, recommendable work and start making profits.

It was hard to ignore the overriding sense from all authors attending the recent Bookseller Author Day conference of the desire for greater transparency, regardless of whether you are traditionally published or not. So it is in that spirit that I tell of a conversation this week with a writer whitefox has worked with over the past year, someone without an agent but with a finished manuscript, looking ideally for a traditional publishing partner. Through his own networking, he seems to have found someone potentially interested, a known publisher with many years of output. This publisher has offered him this proposal: they will publish his book, on the understanding that he contributes £9,000 towards the editorial process.

whitefox were recently involved in the publication of an unauthorised biography of chart-topping singer and X-Factor judge Rita Ora.
Authors Douglas Wight and Jennifer Wiley came to whitefox while they were deliberating how to publish their book. After researching and writing the book, they were in the unusual situation of securing a serial deal with a national newspaper before they had a publisher in place. They had interest from publishers and a concrete offer but for a variety of reasons the traditional route didn’t appeal to them on this occasion. Wight approached whitefox and in a matter of weeks Hot Right Now, A Definitive Biography of Rita Ora was being sold on Amazon and in WHSmiths nationwide.

There’s so much talk at the moment about the growing freelancer economy, the pluses and pitfalls of going solo, that it isn’t always easy to differentiate between the reality and the myths of striking out on your own. So to try and understand what it is really like, whitefox has been talking to Jill Sawyer. Jill has been freelance for 3 years, working as an editor, typesetter and project manager for a number of individual and company clients. Previously, she worked at DK and Scholastic.

whitefox CEO John Bond describes the age of the specialist, where there is real value in exact knowledge and skill. In a world obsessed with peer review and a marketplace driven by innovation, the big winners will be those who aspire to be better than the rest. This article first appeared in the Publishers Weekly London Show Daily on April 16th 2013.