Meet the Community:
Spiffing Publishing
1. What's your company called?
We are Spiffing Publishing.
2. What services or products do you offer?
We offer a bespoke, end-to-end service which covers all aspects of book creation, international book distribution and author/publisher marketing and brand-building. That includes cover design, all levels of manuscript support from full ghost-writing to proofreading, bespoke illustration, typesetting, ebook creation, audiobooks, distribution to all major retailers, websites, social media campaigns, data-driven marketing tools, exhibition and point of sale items and anything else that a publisher might need. If a publisher needs something new and different, we’re always up for a challenge.
3. How can you help IPG members?
Spiffing is the only independent publisher service agency to be recommended by Gardners, Nielsen, IngramSpark and Publisher Rocket. We have fantastic and valuable connections and are pleased to be making new ones with IPG members.
What we offer is a clear centre point for truly progressive independent publishing services, knowledge, insight and strategy. We don’t just rely on intuition and experience to create a world-class service; the constant dialogue we have with our professional publishing clients gives us continuous opportunities to refine and improve our approach. In other words, we have become a natural hub of best practices which any publisher can engage with.
We don’t take any royalties or channel them through our company; publishers are paid directly by retailers, and we don’t hold copyright or distribution rights over the books we supply or assets we create. We’re working with the writers of household IP such as Midsomer Murders, and also hundreds of debut author publishers. Our clients tend to be ambitious and discerning, and all are welcome.
4. What do you enjoy about working in publishing?
There’s so much to enjoy in publishing since it encapsulates so many incredible disciplines, and the Spiffing team all love books. We could talk endlessly about the art and science of cover design or the synergies that arise when authors and editors collaborate, but Spiffing was created to democratise these professional publishing opportunities, and we enjoy nothing more than seeing talented independent authors and publishers achieve success by engaging with a truly valuable, genuinely creative publishing process.
This is good for publishers, authors and, importantly, readers. Ultimately, when readers get to engage with highly original world-class indie titles, which haven’t been gatekept by big-business traditional publishers or made unprofessional by low-quality self-publishing companies, then we’re happy, and so are our publishers.
5. What do you think is the single biggest opportunity and the single biggest threat for independent publishers right now?
It’s hard to be categorical about such a complex subject but perhaps the biggest opportunity is the sheer potential in the freedom of owning top-tier book products in their entirety, without any gatekeeping in the traditional publishing sense.
It would be easy to say Artificial Intelligence is the biggest threat but I think the greatest risk continues to be poor service companies that seem to persist and flourish while simultaneously hamstringing authors and publishers with bad services and problematic contracts.
6. What do you want to get out of belonging to the IPG?
We’d like to use new connections to keep raising the bar for what is possible—and expected—of independent publishing. People talk about ‘changing the narrative’ around particular industries and while that is a bit of a platitude these days, it’s really what needs to happen. The industry is still being stifled; systemically by traditional publishing conventions and gatekeeping, and from within by the unacceptably low standard of many ‘self-publishing’ services. Spiffing wants to help create a culture around independent publishing which is progressive, inclusive and world-class, and which we can all be proud of.
Visit the Spiffing Publishing website