Mean with Money

I’ve decided to sell up. For 40 years I’ve had a company, with directors and accounts and details lodged at Companies House. Not exactly Microsoft or Easyjet, though much older than both, as Forster Davies Ltd was formed back in 1966.

When I first printed the company’s headed note paper, I amused myself by putting the foundation year at the top, and then the legend, “London and Loweswater”. It sounded right grand.

It was only me, of course, though my wife was also a director on paper. Once a year I’d say to her after breakfast: “That was a board meeting, that was.”

In the 1970s, top rates of income tax were 80 per cent and our accountant at the time suggested we form our own company. We could put into it some of our book earnings, to ease our personal-tax burdens. So we did, for a few years.

Then it slowly became pointless. Tax rates generally got lower and if we had taken money out of the company, we would have had to pay tax twice — once as a company and once when the cash came into our hands. So we never did. I later changed accountants.

Forster Davies Ltd, with its grand note-paper, just lay there doing nothing. In the 1970s, I heard about ace financial whizzes who were looking for “shells” — companies legally formed but empty — which they could use for their own dodgy purposes, but nobody ever offered to buy it.

Then in 1983, it burst into life. The first spark was receiving a new children’s book I’d done, published by one of my regular publishers, which had eight blank pages. What a damn waste, I screamed. Aren’t publishers dopey. Those eight pages had gone through an expensive printing process — just to end up blank. I could have filled them with, oh I dunno, jokes and silly facts.

The second thing was having an idea for a really opinionated guide to the Lake District, in which I would give marks for everything, not just hotels and restaurants. And I would leave no blank spaces.

I feared an ordinary publisher would muck it all up, so I decided to do it myself. I would call it the Good Guide, and if it worked I would go on to do the same format for places all over the world. I had the idea before Rough Guides and all the other modern opinionated guides came along.

I used the money lying in Forster Davies to hire a researcher and paid a local Lakeland printer to do 11,000 copies.

The biggest problem for all little publishers is to get the books into shops.

I did a deal with Anthony Cheetham, who was then setting up Century (which later turned into Random House), to distribute my books for 20% of the net returns.

I persuaded Romneys, a local Kendal mint-cake firm, to give me 1,000 bars which I gave out to the first 1,000 readers. I wasn’t aware, not being a proper publisher, that this was actually against the law. Until the repeal of the net book agreement, you couldn’t offer such inducements to buy books.

It caused a scene in one bookshop when a customer, having been given a free bar of mint cake with his book, threw it on the shop floor. He turned out to be a dentist.

The total cost, including advertising and a good launch party, came to £8,398. In three months, we’d sold out and earned £10,398. I then went on to print a further 20,000 copies, which also sold.

Wow, this is easy money, I thought. So I gave some of it away to the Cumbria Tourist Board to set up an annual prize for the Lakeland Book of the Year (still going).

I did think of tooling up, hiring proper staff and covering the world, but decided to stay small, sticking to the area I knew best. So I hired someone to write a book about Lakeland towns — on which I lost £10,000. I spent too much on it, and nobody bought it. The Good Quiz Book to the Lakes did well, but then I went potty and did a Quiz Book to London. That also lost £10,000.

After about five years, I decided to stick to the book I’d started off with — The Good Guide to the Lakes. Over the years, I’ve done six editions. They’ve got more expensive because I have always insisted on having them printed in Lakeland, by native Cumbrians. India or China would have been much cheaper.

Almost 100,000 copies have now been sold. Each edition has made a profit, though less in recent years. I last did a new edition in 2003. Been too busy with other things.

Last year, the profit on the sales was £1,000 — yet the accountancy bill was £1,500. I couldn’t believe it. This way madness lies, or bankruptcy.

Having a limited company, however titchy, now involves so much paperwork, faffing around and rules and regulations that only accountants can understand.

It was really the accountancy bill that pissed me off, and the thought of all the boring company paper every year from now on. At my age, I’m trying to cut down on such nonsense.

So I’ve sold out, for a modest sum, to Frances Lincoln, a proper publishing firm. It publishes the Wainwright books and promises to keep The Good Guide to the Lakes going. For ever, I hope.

What have I learned? Well, it was good fun, thinking for a few years I was going to be an entrepreneur, setting up a publishing empire. In another life, I think I could well have been a businessman.

Advertising, especially mail order, is a waste of money. Launch parties are brilliant, but don’t sell books. And Kendal mint cake probably does rot your teeth.

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