A lawyer and retired local government Chief Executive, Andrew Sparke has reinvented himself as a writer and Indie Publisher. He owns and manages APS Books, publishing more than 200 books by over 60 indie writers, poets and photographers as well as his own work. “Kindle and Createspace have revolutionised publishing and we’re exploring how far we can use the ease of access to readers Amazon now provides.”
News and much more information is available at www.andrewsparke.com and he’s currently setting up a new site, bellawychelm.com to explore his fascination with the 1943 Worcestershire body-in-a-tree mystery.
Two novels Abuse, Cocaine and Soft Furnishings and Copper Trance & Motorways are available and the conclusion of the Lincoln Trilogy, Anger Limerence & Fault Lines is in hand. He is also the author of two volumes of poetry, ‘Gutter Verse & The Baboon Concerto‘ and ‘The Mother Lode‘, as well as ‘War Shadows‘, a compilation of three WWII stories including ‘Bella In The Wych-Elm’.
The Accidental Publisher
Andy Sparke never set out to be a publisher. It started when he wrote a post-retirement novel and – with a certain contempt for the industry – decided not to risk rejection letters or sell it for peanuts.
A short course with The Guardian and a bit of research into the eBook and print-on-demand tools Amazon was providing meant a poetry booklet, the novel and a ‘How To’ guide were soon out there on sale.
What he hadn’t figured on was the silent multitude of unpublished or unencouraged writers in his orbit who started asking him to look at their work. And so around 2015 he fell into indie publishing as a second career.
He didn’t need to make a living out of it so he could take a long-term view and design a collaborative business model, keeping costs to a minimum and rewarding writers with a 50/50 split of the income, giving them a healthy reason to promote their work themselves.
He was surprised at the take up; he is now publishing nearly fifty people in all genres including photography books. The biggest sub-set is poetry followed by fiction and children’s books but Health, World War II and Erotica are also well represented. It means there are always interesting tasks for him and the three freelance editors he now uses.