A brief introduction

Like most writers and editors, I've followed changes in the publishing world closely for years with both interest and considerable anxiety. My longtime pet project, a kind of social history of Quebec cuisine reflecting the origins and effects of a 19th-century French cookbook along with its translation, is the sort of thing most publishers would dismiss as utterly unmarketable. Some publish works in translation but not cookbooks. Some do publish cookbooks but want recipes tested with precise modern measurements and equipment and glossy full-colour pictures of dishes. Some publish historical work but want the authors to be qualified historians or at least recognized quantities. Now, having spent some months querying agents about a mainstream novel which should be commercially viable, I am sure I do not want to do this for my own work. (Actually, I knew this before but have never written for the market; though I've had a few shorter works published, I rarely bothered submitting anything anywhere.) Fortunately, though technology is not an unmixed blessing, it does mean self-publishing is an option and shouldn't be beyond the capacities of an experienced editor. Thinking about that rather idly one day (while avoiding some tedious tasks, if the truth be known) I realized if I were to do it, I could quite possibly publish other things, too. "Why not?" I thought...and that is why this is called Quidne Press.