The Book Depository: What/who do you see as your primary market?

Catheryn Kilgarriff: What a question. It's hard to answer, since we rarely meet the readers of our books with the exception of the literary people involved in books, particularly those interested in literature in translation. So although the approval of our peers is important, they are not the people we are aiming at when we decide to publish a book.

All I can do is talk a little about the people who contact us. When we published Riverbend's book, Baghdad Burning, it became clear that a lot of people care deeply about the continuing danger this young Iraqi author is in, as she stays in Baghdad. She has been there throughout the American occupation, and when her recent blog said she was preparing to leave Baghdad, our inbox filled up with emails from people who wish to know where she is moving to. So you could say our target readers for this book are people who are fed up of the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq.

But, as any publisher would say, we hope for as wide an audience as possible for our books.

BD: What are the principal challenges/opportunities you see at the moment in the business of publishing books?

CK: Opportunities - well, there are many but there are also crushing disappointments in store for any publisher. The independent publisher scene has been buoyed by the arrival of new people, but I am also saddened by the way The Women's Press has disappeared, with Quartet, and the fact that John Murray is part of a large firm. The internet opens many doors also, as people hear about books online.

BD: What brings you to the decision to publish a particular title/author?

CK: It is almost always gut instinct. A book may really impress me, as Touba and the Meaning of Night did, or the books of Elif Shafak (The Flea Palace and The Gaze). The cookery book, Chocolate and Zucchini by Clotilde Dusoulier came about because I read her web site, and cooked from it, so she chose us when it came to selling the UK rights of her book. Other books we commission, as in the case of Lawrence Potter, who is currently writing a book on the politics in the newspapers which confuse us, This May Help You Understand the World.

BD: What books are you most proud of having published?

CK: I'm proud of being the first English language publisher of Elif Shafak in the world, of publishing Baghdad Burning in the UK, and of publishing Hong Ying. But really there are too many authors on our list to single out a few, and we also have a backlist which includes Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Hubert Selby Jr. It's been hard work, but I guess I am proud that I took this company from crippling debt to solvency although it took several years.

BD: What books are you working on right now?

CK: We're writing in house our book on book blogs, The Bookaholics Guide to Book Blogs, and we are working on Rhidian Brook's More Than Eyes Can See about his journey through the Aids diaspora.

*****

These are The Book Depository's 5 favourite Marion Boyars titles: