Langtail Press

Langtail Press is a new kid on the block so far as publishers go. It's a venture run by James Prichard, and it produces print on demand traditional format books and e-books.

What is special about Langtail is the list of titles, which include many 'forgotten classics'. For instance, there are several titles by Anthony Berkeley, the brilliant plot-twister of the Golden Age and founder of the Detection Club.

Other authors on the list so far are three of the great American crime writers – John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen and Fredric Brown. All of them fascinating novelists, all brilliantly ingenious. I am reading one of them now and will review it before long.

James told me: 'I set up the business about a year ago, with the general idea of bringing out of print books back to life. I started with crime books because a) it is a genre I love and b) because they lend themselves to this publishing model: the writers were prolific, the books are short, readers are many, voracious and completists, and there is a good community on the web. I approached a few agents and, possibly to my surprise, I got some really great authors quite quickly...I have about 50 titles available currently, and am now desperately trying to gather more titles for publication early in the Summer. Part of the difficulty with this as a project is tracking down the rights for the authors: some Estates (mostly it is Estates, not authors) have agents, but some do not and tracking these down is not easy (though fun).'

More power to his elbow!