Justin Pollard, co-founder of Unbound, has responded to Anthony Horowitz’s speech on the publishing industry (published in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago) a piece of his own in The Independent, explaining how Unbound’s crowd-funding model differs from self-publishing.

At an event hosted by The Book People the other week, the author Anthony Horowitz gave a rather witty speech about the relationship between writers and their publishers. It was entertaining, and I agreed with much of it. Apart from the bit that really annoyed me.

Like him, I’m an author. But I’m also a publisher.

Yet his speech provoked a good deal of recognition, not schizophrenia. I agree with him that a publisher’s job is to deliver ‘story, character, style, originality, design, typography, literacy, good grammar, education, enlightenment’, that publishers aren’t (often) Luddites. That the challenge they face is a world which talks of ‘content’, not ‘books’ and which is undergoing the most fundamental change since the invention of the printing press. I also agree that authors and publishers often need fact checkers. Anthony Horowitz clearly does.

His argument all started to go a bit peculiar when he got to a part of the topic I know very well. He’s said it before, on the BBC when I and two other writers launched Unbound, our crowd-funding publishing company. And now he said it again: ‘I could,’ he said, ‘go it alone and self publish with Unbound, as Terry Jones did last year.’

Go it alone? Self-publish? A spot of research wouldn’t go amiss. Just a visit to our site would be a start.

Or he could have asked Terry Jones or Kate Mosse or, if he dared, the terrifying polymath Jonathan Meades what being published by Unbound actually involves? If he had, he would have learned that his notion of ‘things publishers do’ – i.e. making exactingly edited and imaginatively promoted books – are being performed here by people who have worked in ‘proper publishing’ for many decades.

Of course we don’t mind Anthony having a bit of a dig at us – he has every right to decided for himself if we can produce well crafted books, provided he’s read them. What is sad that is that he should feel the need to have a dig at our (and his fellow) authors. Does he really think that they need to self-publish?

Click here to head over to The Independent and read the rest…

Unbound’s John Mitchinson is in the Guardian today, replying to author Anthony Horowitz’s article (also published in the Guardian) from last week about the need for publishers. Read on for an explanation of what Unbound is really about and how we differ from self-publishing. 

I enjoyed Anthony Horowitz’s witty article about the writer’s need for a publisher (The battle for books, 28 February). And I agreed with almost every word. Like him, working as an author and a publisher, I talk about books, not “content”; and like him I believe that a publisher’s job is to deliver “story, character, style, originality, design, typography, literacy, good grammar, education, enlightenment”.

I agree that most publishers aren’t, by and large, venal Luddites. They are trying to publish the best books they can in a market that is undergoing its biggest change in 500 years. But change demands new ideas. And, as usual, these are coming from the periphery not the core. From start-ups such as Byliner, Box Fiction – and Unbound, the crowd-funding publishing company I founded with two other writers last June.

But then the creator of Alex Rider had to go and spoil it. “I could, of course, go it alone,” he said. “I could self-publish, as former Python Terry Jones did last year, through unbound.co.uk.” Go it alone? Self-publish? Has Horowitz visited our site? Has he asked Jones or Kate Mosse, or the famously fastidious Jonathan Meades, what being published by Unbound actually involves? If he had, he would have learned that his litany of things publishers do – ie making exactingly edited, beautifully designed and imaginatively promoted books in printed and digital editions – is being performed here by people who have worked in “proper” publishing for decades.

Then he made things even worse by quotingquoted a reviewer who had asked: “What do they do if the writer delivers a damp squib? On the evidence, they’ll publish it anyway.” We wouldn’t, of course. The irony is that a lot of people would like us to do just that.

Click here to read the rest of the article on the Guardian’s site & let us know your opinion in the comments.