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Caspar
Chamberlain studied creative writing at the University of Gloucestershire.
Now he has graduated, but the urge to write is far from dead.
He
has set up his own publishing company in order to further the dream
and allow others to get their work out in print.
The
Eureka Moment
"The
idea for First Time Publishers came to me in the sauna," Caspar
said.
"We
needed to put a book together as part of our professor’s brief
for our course. Sonja van Leeuwen and I were put in charge of organising
it."
"At
first we thought we could go through the in-house publishing at
the university, but we eventually decided to go a different way.
"We
wanted to have a proper ISBN number and that meant we needed to
be a proper publishing company and that meant we need to have an
address and......"
And
all this came to him in the sauna!
Take
Two
At
the moment, a second volume of short stories is well underway, following
the success of the first volume: A Short Anthology of Short Stories.
The
first volume was written solely by university students, but the
second volume will contain work from a more varied selection of
writers.
I
just want to help people to produce something they can show
people and say ‘I did that’
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| Caspar
Chamberlain |
Caspar
sees this as a great way for unpublished writers to get their work
in print. There is a very short print run to the books, so money
is not wasted on producing hundreds of books that will remain unsold.
Despite
the limited quantity of the books, Caspar has made sure that there
are plenty in stock in several local bookshops.
Future
Projects
Future
publishing projects for First Time Publishers include the publication
of Caspar’s stage play version of Joseph Conrad’s Almayer’s
Folly and a collection of children’s stories.
The
range of genres covered by the publishing company is quite large.
At the moment though, Caspar is quite happy to pursue the short
story anthology project.
Now
For Something Completely Different
Tim
Pears, who introduces the first volume of short stories, comments
that he found no "common themes and threads" in the collection
of stories.
Subjects
covered included suicide bombers in Kuwait, junkie shoplifters and
ghosts.
The
second volume promises to be just as varied with a science fiction
story about an alien child, an horrific story of a nightmare turning
into reality and an account of the persecution of a man wrongly
accused of rape.
Caspar
the Friendly Publisher
Caspar
seems to be very pleased with the project and how much interested
it has generated already.
"I
just want to help people to produce something they can show people
and say ‘I did that’," he explained.
It’s
a good idea, a noble idea even. And if it all goes wrong, he can
always go back to the sauna!
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Creative
writing graduate Caspar had a 'eureka' moment in the sauna when he
hit upon the idea of starting his own publishing company - Stephen
Morris found out more.
