"Why don't we start our own pop-up press?" was the question that started everything. It was around this time last year, and the photographer Christina Theisen and I had just moved into a basement in Bloomsbury (as temporary property guardians). Surrounded by decades of publishing history, we wondered if we couldn't contribute, somehow. It was a fancy, really.

At the time, both Christina and I were involved in projects we wanted to share with an audience: Christina was working on a collection of photographs of unusual London garden spaces for which the freelance journalist Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi was writing an accompanying essay. I was putting the finishing touches on a climate change-themed novel.

Walking Hampstead Heath one day, I was struck by how complementary the two projects really were, both of them dealing in their own way with the activism of ordinary people. And – fancy as it had sounded, at first – our own small press suddenly seemed the perfect vehicle to do exactly what we wanted to do with them.

Publishing From Here and Gardens ourselves, we thought, would mean: no compromises. No prolonged waits (important for work which we wanted to be timely). No fight with a publishing industry we suspected would have to be wrestled into considering work like this.

A coot I had seen on a canal in Amsterdam inspired the name: independent-minded (bordering the stubborn), and pretty determined – we thought that was quiet fitting. Christina took out a pen and – using a photograph as a blueprint – drew the bird. We had a logo. And our ISBN allocation was on its way. This was getting real.

From the beginning, one thing was crucial to Christina, Rebecca and me: quality. We didn't want to put out anything that wasn't as good as it could be. We signed up our friend, the journalist Omer Ali, as an editor, proof-reader and advisor. Another friend, the graphic designer Kathrin Reid, helped with the design. I had already worked with a former Macmillan editor on my novel.

And then, four months after that question – pop-up press? – we stood amid the beautiful surroundings of the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, holding up two books. By that time, London bookshops including Foyles, Blackwells, the London Review Bookshop, and Pages of Hackney had already taken them onto their shelves (and sometimes in their display windows). We were thrilled.

Why is this story worth telling? Because something else might have happened, instead: nothing. Even just a few decades ago, starting your own publishing imprint would have been a daunting, expensive, frustrating undertaking. Back then, no one might have read our words; no one might have seen our pictures. Two more projects: binned.

But this is the 21st century. Like never before in publishing, it's possible to make things happen. And that's exactly what so many of us are doing, of course: The Coot is far from lonely. Influx Press, 3AM Press and, of course, Galley Beggar are three examples of fantastic small presses, all doing their own individual thing (compared to them, by the way, the Coot is a very small bird indeed). The scene is thriving.

None of this is happening as an assault to traditional publishers (at least not to my mind) – we're complementary. Our small presses allow us to do what bigger publishers are reluctant to do, or simply can't. Next month, for instance, the Coot will publish a booklet of poems, all of which have already appeared on my website – which publisher would accept them? Exactly.

Our small presses mean we can publish fiction that's edgy or experimental (read: uncommercial), or very niche, because we believe in it. We can keep books in print that would otherwise be lost. We can be adventurous, even reckless. We can go about doing what we feel we have to do, and, seriously, what's more beautiful than that?

Daniel Kramb, The Lonely Coot