Handheld Press was set up by Kate Macdonald — a literary historian, editor, reviewer and a former lecturer in British literature and cultural history. She has published over fifty books, chapters and articles of her own research on twentieth-century British book history and publishing culture. As an editor she spent fifteen years helping other writers tell their stories, in archaeology, history, clinical practice and building conservation. She is Handheld’s commissioning editor, editorial director, production manager, image researcher, print buyer, and publicity & marketing coordinator. Multi-tasking and communications are her business.
David Marsh is in charge of Handheld’s financial management. Logic patrol, reining in unwarranted enthusiasms and playing devil’s advocate are his responsibilities. He is a mathematician and statistician, and takes a great many photographs. He writes occasionally about Bridget Riley and fractals on Tumblr.
All Handheld Press books have been designed from the beginning by Nadja Guggi of Messrs Dash + Dare.
Kate handles our Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest accounts. Kath Marsh is our social media content manager for Instagram and YouTube.
Our publicity assistance comes from Judith Wise (UK) and Jay Nachman (US), and our books are represented in the UK by Signature Books UK. Combined Book Services distribute our books in the UK and the rest of the world, excluding North America. Two Rivers / Ingram are responsible for all our North American sales and distribution. Siserone handle our website and data management.
Environmental sustainability
We work hard to minimize the environmental impact of our business.
Our daily commute is done by foot (down a flight of stairs to the office at the front of our house). When we travel on business it’s most often by bicycle, then by train. We use the car to drive to book fairs three or four times in a normal year. We fly once a year on business, if at all. We use Skype, Zoom and Teams, emails and the phone to work together.
Our books are printed in short runs in the west of England using Forest Stewardship Council paper. We ship our stock to North America by sea, but single orders go by air. Sometimes we drive boxes of book orders to the post office for bulk posting, but most often they’re taken to the post office by bicycle.
Our printers use recyclable cartons and paper packaging, which we reuse in our direct sales packaging. All book orders sent from our office and all our review copies are despatched in 100% recycled and recyclable packaging. #nojiffybags
All our titles are available as ebooks in Kindle and epub formats, and are distributed worldwide to all standard retail and library platforms.
