I won't go all Colin Welland and say that "the independents are coming", but with three small indies on the Man Booker this year, small is beautiful once again and size doesn't matter.

Novels can be transformative and the reading public are looking elsewhere for their stories. We started Bluemoose because we were sick and tired of all the celebrity stuff out there, taking more of the publishing pie than is healthy for publishing to survive.

Bluemoose was founded on anger and bile. It was also a one fingered gesture to what is called the 'London Publishing Houses' that refuse to publish stories that the editors love but the suits deem too uncommercial, i.e. they won't have a No 1 hit on their hands. It is blinkered and unhealthy. Literature is nothing if it doesn't invest in new writers and investing in Pippa Middleton's party tips is regressive. Penguin's love in with Bertelsmann/Random House will see even more Sleberiture being published.

Publishers have always published celebrity authors and the deal was that the profit went back into new writing and the nurturing of new talent. Not anymore. Very few three or four book deals are being signed. Although there are some new writers emerging from the bigger publishers it seems that independents, who have different responsibilities and no shareholders to worry about are becoming the A&R men for megacorps publishers. Look at Faber rejecting Deborah Levy's novel, Any Other Stories publishing it and then Faber publishing once it got onto The Man Booker. And Faber isn't an Indy in the sense that it is a multi million pound publishing company. Necks of brass, the lot of them.

I had won a national writing prize, was whisked down to London by a broadsheet Sunday paper, wined and dined at the Ivy - you know the place where orange headed slebs move Tibetan lettuce around a plate whilst seeing if anyone more famous is in. Everyone was more famous than me and the editor from Macmillan and an agent from Curtis Brown weren't too happy when I nearly got thrown out for trying to 'borrow a facecloth from the toilets.' They didn't like my finished book either.

It was a year later when I saw in The Bookseller that all the big money advances were going to young Irish writer's that I planned the second assault on literature. I changed my name to Colm O'Driscoll, became Oirish and was signed up by Darley Anderson. When I arrived in London to sign my contract, they were slightly disappointed when they found I wasn't the next Flann O'Brian but English, over forty and not the natural face to put on the front of TIME magazine.

Everybody loved my book, Anthills And Stars, about hippies moving into a northern cotton town at the end of the sixties, but still no contract. The sales people at the London publishers said they couldn't sell 20,000 copies and my second attempt to get published had failed.

I returned home to Hebden Bridge, moaned and whinged and Heth my wife, told me to grow a pair, so I did. I am now gonad squared. We re-mortgaged the house and started Bluemoose Books publishing my book and the Bridge Between by Nathan Vanek. And started marketing our books through libraries, local bookshops and via some great and knowledgeable booksellers at Waterstones Leeds, Bradford and Manchester. Eventually London got wind, The Guardian asked to read one of our books, King Crow by Michael Stewart and before you can say, Northern Indy, we had our first national review in the Guardian and King Crow went on to win The Not The Booker. David Peace said it was: “Brilliant and one of the best debuts I have read in years.” It was also chosen as a recommended read for World Book Night. We have also just signed a TV/Film contract for one of our books but I can't say which one, just yet. Hollywood is reading another and our latest novel, Nod by Canadian writer, Adrian Barnes, is being heralded as the 21st century John Wyndham.

A few years down the line, twelve books later and we now have three of our titles being published in foreign climes. Russian publisher, Centerpolygraph of Moscow has just published Falling Through Clouds by Anna Chilvers, King Crow by Michael Stewart and Gabriel's Angel by Mark Radcliffe (Christopher Brookmyre says some great things about Mark's book) are being published in January by Azbooka-Atticus a Russian publisher from St Petersburg owned by Alexander Mamut, who owns Waterstones. King Crow is also being published by Artline of Sofia, Bulgaria. Pig Iron by Benjamin Myers and Nod are being read by major US and Australian publishers too. Exciting times and not a royally related upper class buttock in site to drive the business forward.

If you're an Indy publisher and think we - and everyone else - should know more about you, drop us a line!