Our History
Hi everybody,
I'm Dan, CEO of Fantastic Books Publishing. So you're interested in our history? Well, it all started with a recipe for my grandmother's 'melting moments'...
On discovering that the old recipe book (which hadn't left the shelf in over a decade) had become terribly moth-eaten, my wife Gabi and I tried in vain to rescue the recipe which crumbled to dust beneath our fingers. With a heavy heart I vowed never to let this happen to any of my dear grandmother's recipes ever again.
So Gabi and I co-wrote 'Fantastic Cookies' using recipes from the family and released it as an ebook, therefore ensuring its existence forever. We found the experience amazing and so went on to write a small series of cook books culminating in '50 Shades of Gravy', a collection of 50 bona fide gravy, sauce and coulis recipes to tickle the fancy of the sexiest of socialites!
The process of publishing these books got us both thinking... For 5 years I worked as both an author and artist's agent and publicist and would spend time chasing book signings, liaising with creative types and dealing with publishers. After pursuing success for my clients it soon became clear that one thing was certain about the creative industries. Publishing is a rewarding business.
But at what cost?
In the worst cases I found that if a book was sold to a retailer, the author would receive less than a penny for the sale whereas the publisher would receive over £1. This could not be fair and so I decided to try a fairer business model, a model where regardless of where a book was sold, or in what format, the profits would be shared fairly between author and publisher.
During the research that led up to the creation of Fantastic Books Publishing, I learnt that my model was actually where publishing had started out, an equal partnership between publisher and author. I also heard from many industry professionals that my approach was not sustainable.
Fast forward to today and we're still here, still delivering Fantastic books into the world, still being fair to our authors and still managing to keep our heads above water.
We support over 20 charities, run an annual convention, sponsor a horse rider, a heritage railway and a small rally team, own a sound studio, have a fledgling film division and take care of the work of almost 100 authors, all while achieving our aim of giving our authors a fair share of the profits from their books.
I hope you like what we're trying to do and will check out our latest Fantastic offerings to the wonderful world of literature!
Dan Grubb
CEO
Fantastic Books Publishing
Click to read our resources pages or press onwards to meet our Fantastic team