About
Quick Brown Fox Publications was set up by Adam Kirkman in late 2006 with the express aim of helping first-time authors achieve publication. Kirkman has almost ten years' experience of the book trade and has seen a vicious cycle developing in which talented authors are rejected by literary agents and publishers because they have not been published, and so on, until the author, agent and - eventually - reader all lose out.
Determined to break this cycle, Kirkman rejected advances for his own debut novel and struck out on his own. Since the publication of Before The Eyes Of The Gods in 2006, the future has looked bright for Quick Brown Fox. The critical success of Eyes... paved a way for the commercial success of Daniel Mayhew's Life And How To Live It, which is constantly reprinting to meet demand, and Brian McCusker's SAS: Special Ace Supply (Teacher). Late 2007 saw QBF rise to another level with the tense, dark crime thriller The Amateur Historian (Julian Cole) proving a runaway Christmas success. 2008 saw QBF’s first children’s book, Septimus Smythe and the Spectre Detectors (Diana Shaw) which started a whole series that will continue in 2009 and conclude in 2010. The year also finished with QBF’s first humour title, the refreshingly disrespectful How Not To Manage, which was a Christmas bestseller. 2009 saw the customary four books from QBF - the first being Coffins, Cats and Fair Trade Sex Toys by Jeremy Piercy, launched to coincide with Fair Trade Fortnight. This was followed by the beautiful and bleak Better To Have Loved And Lost by Adam Kirkman, which broke hearts all over the country. We then created a brand new series by publishing Diana Shaw’s double-header Horace and the Stowaway and Edward and the Book Crooks, both wonderfully illustrated by the talented Zosia Olenska. We closed the year with another Christmas bestseller, Julian Cole's Felicity's Gate, which continued the Rounder Brothers crime series.
2009, however, proved a mixed year for QBF. We celebrated our three year anniversary, but the collapse of one of the UK's leading high street book chains (with all the unpaid invoices that remained) has crippled us for the future. So, we were faced with a difficult decision. We could call it a day and lose something special, or we could adapt to the circumstances we've been dealt. And so Lively Dog was born.
The aim of Lively Dog is to keep books by talented authors flowing into the market, using the same creative team as QBF - so you know you'll get a good product. We hope that, after a year or two of Lively Dog, we'll be able to run it alongside a resurgent QBF - and create a publishing empire that is dedicated to getting the most for our authors.
For more details, please contact us at info@quickbrownfoxpublications.co.uk
