Ex Libris Press
HANDBOUND BOOKS
Interest seems to be growing in these little books which I print and bind at home. There is a particular interest in my STILES book and I have received orders from London, the Lake District and even from California. One grateful customer sent a note of appreciation as follows:
‘Hi Roger.
Just wanted to tell you how much I love the Stiles book. It’s an absolute delight in form and content. I would pay more.
Many thanks.’
Books on Wiltshire, Somerset & Devon
Reprinted with revisions in 2023:
BEYOND WHERE WILTSHIRE MEETS SOMERSET
Published in 2019, reprinted in 2020 and again in 2023:
BRADFORD ON AVON … a town like no other
Something like this book, or booklet, had been in the back of my mind for several years. I knew there was a likely demand for a handy, introductory guide to the town from our many visitors and new residents. I didn’t want it to be anything like A Book of Newton Abbot, my first effort and an attempted comprehensive town history, published way back in 1979 and still selling. Bradford on Avon … a town like no other is a 32 page booklet, generously illustrated with colour photographs and a specially drawn map in the centre-fold.
It takes the form of a guided exploration which includes many noteworthy sites of interest and some not so well known. In addition there are sections on the once all-important Woollen Cloth and Rubber industries, the Saxon Church and Holy Trinity, the Kennet & Avon Canal, the Railway and the Roman Villa. The result is intended to be an informative and accessible introduction to this remarkable small town. My first book, first published in 1979, was about Newton Abbot in Devon, the town in which I was resident between 1976 and 1980 after which I moved to Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire. I have now lived here for forty years so feel I have bookended my publishing career with a second book about the town I inhabit.
Where Wiltshire Meets Somerset was first published in 1982 and continues to sell steadily. We published a revised edition in October 2020. The 500 copy print run sold out within a year so that we published a further updated edition in November 2021. In this time of COVID, walking seems to be more popular than ever.
My second volume of local walks, Beyond Where Wiltshire Meets Somerset, was published in 2015. This too sold steadily, reprinted in 2019 and again, thoroughly revised and updated, in 2023.
Other than maintaining my two books of walks, I am no longer actively adding titles to our West Country list. Of our books specifically on the town, Bradford on Avon: Past & Present (which began life in 1988) is out of print. Bradford Voices was first published in 1998, an enlarged and revised edition published in 2011, reprinted in 2019 and remains in print.
ACCORDING TO THE BOOK
I began work on this book several years ago but, enjoying a quiet patch in early 2016, at last managed to complete it. It is basically a record of my publishing activities since I wrote and published my first effort back in 1979. Yes, it is autobiographical but I hope it says something interesting and perhaps enlightening about the experience of a one-man-band publisher of mostly local interest books in a small provincial town.