In An Office Above A Cinema Long, Long Ago…
Tangent Books: The Long Story
There was once a book publisher called Naked Guides Ltd. In fact there still is. It was set up by Richard Jones and Steve Faragher in 2004 with the intention of writing a series of alternative guide books to all the major (and not so major) towns and cities in the UK. The books would be sharp, funny, in-depth, revealing. They would lay bare the towns and cities. They would be Naked Guides.
Two talented writers, Gil Gillespie and Gideon Kibblewhite, were swept along on the wave of enthusiasm and soon the first editions appeared of the The Naked Guide To Bristol (by Gil) and Gideon's Naked Guide to Bath. We got offers from authors to write about Birmingham, Liverpool, Swansea and other places. But they weren't the right people for us. Rather than dilute the manifesto commitment to be
'alternative, informative and funny as ****'
we went down the pub with Alex Murphy and decided to put together a series of sporting quote books on the Toilet Books imprint. Then a bloke called Stanley moved into the offfice, which was above a cinema in the middle of Bath. He did art stuff for Radiohead and wrote loads. We liked his style so we worked together to publish his wonderful collection of Miserable Stories. Shortly afterwards, Richard met up with his old Swansea friend Ian 'Class War' Bone. We decided to publish his autobiography Bash the Rich.
By this time we realised that we had gone off on a tangent from our original plans. We had two Naked Guides, but about six other books that were neither naked nor guides. So we decided to call ourselves Tangent Books and we're officially 'Naked Guides Ltd trading as Tangent Books'. We adopted a mission statement to 'publish interesting stuff' and provide 'quality books for the discerning punter'.
So that's us. What do you do?
We do hope you enjoy perusing the witty, irreverent, radical and brilliant selection of books we have here.
Stay classy, San Diego.
Richard Jones
Tangent Books