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We (myself and my wife Monica) specialise in publishing bushwalking and
outdoor
activity books We have received a number of proposals to
publish
books on
other topics but we are not prepared to create books that we are not
personally interested in. We create and distribute
books from our home in Melbourne. So far we have published several
books with John Siseman as a joint author, one written
exclusively by Julia Thorn plus we helped the Geelong Bushwalking Club
with the 4th edition of Walking The Otways. In 2020 we published
another joint production with a walking club to McMillans Walking
Track. We are interested in
publishing more books
written by others but only walking and related
outdoor activity guides will be seriously considered. Our preference is
to publish books of the following types; places that currently do not
have guide books, for new information to an already well-known area or
for an existing guide book that needs a new publisher. The Australian
market is too small to create multiple guides to the one place, most
books are only just viable with annual sales between 300 and 500
copies.
Regarding
distribution - generally, we do not sell direct to shops - we use a number of
distributors and have worked with most of them for many years. Some of
them distribute to speciality shops such as outdoor shops, map shops
and tourist information centres. We also have two distributors that
sell to more general businesses such as newsagents, general book
shops and the larger book chains.
Unlike
some other publishers of walking guides we pay our
authors on a royalty or shared income system - this is based either on
a
percentage of retail sale price or total income (the author chooses which). We do
not pay any advances but an
advantage is that authors share in any profit. Authors retain full
ownership of their manuscript and are not bound to publish future
editions with us - we are also authors and feel that many contracts are
unfair to authors. Contracts do not have to transfer control or
ownership to the publisher or in some cases demand the author must use
the publisher for their next (unspecified) book - if the publisher does
a good job, the author will stay with the publisher.
If you are interested in writing a guide book and having us publish it,
then contact us by post or email. What we require will vary accoridng
to the book. For an out-of-print guide, less is needed while for a
new guide we would like to initially see a brief one page summary
of the
book contents plus a sample of your writing. The ideal would be a
sample chapter
or walk but it might also be magazine articles as thats a good place to
gain some writing experience and also get used to having your writing
edited which is part of any publishing process. We can create maps,
graphics and
images plus we may have to do some of the walks ourselves and the
royalty we offer will depend on how
much work we have to contribute to get your guide into print.
On
another note about self-publishing. We have heard feedback that the
images in our guides are too 'old and dagg'y. Maybe they are as it
takes many years to get images in all sorts of weather
conditions. I select images to show what you will see and
experience. I can Photoshop images to have flash strong colours and
falsify them in many ways and do so for international compeitions but
they are not approriate for a guide book. Having more than 50
idifferent images winning Gold Medals in International exhibitions is
proof that I can photoshop images with the the best of them. However, I
strongly belive that a guide book full of images showing colours that
you will never see or edited to replace elements of an image gives a
false impression. In a good guide book, the images should compliment
the text and give you a fairly good feel for what you will see and
expereince. Having images of fog, stormy weather, muddy tracks, wading
in knee deep water etc as well as some sunny images are all part of the
experience in Tasmania. The photos used are not coffee table book
images and should not be, sure you can have the odd coffee table type
image but the overall thrust should be to illustrate what most walkers
will actually see and expereince. While some may think the images are
daggy, I have never been criticised for the images not being
realistic.
Snail Mail Address
John Chapman, PO Box 5042, Laburnum, 3130, Australia
Images and text are copyright ©2011-2026 John Chapman.
Last updated : August 6th 2026