Yes! Publications
Tel: 028 7126 1941
Email: yes@yespublications.org
Website: www.yespublications.org
Yes! Publications is a community publishing group that was founded in 1986. By the Spring of that year, we had launched our first title, Fingerpost Community Magazine onto the world. Fast forward twenty-three years, and here we are with a comprehensive list of books, magazines and pamphlets in our catalogue and an ever increasing customer base.
Over the last few years the work of YES! Publications has been three pronged:
Development of publishing service: We offer a ‘start to finish’ publishing service to businesses, groups and individuals. Some of our most recent works include Toward Understanding and Healing resource materials, We Were Brothers by Felicity McCall, and Remembering: Our Shared Legacy from the First World War on behalf of the North West War Memorial Project. This aspect of our work is steadily increasing, as we have many returning and new customers.
Publish our own titles: As well as offering a publishing service to others, we publish our own titles. Three recent examples include the publication of the Second Edition of Three Cheers for the Derrys! By Gardiner S. Mitchell and James King’s Moving Pitches.
Children’s Publishing: In recent years we have identified a niche in the market for local children’s books. Over the last nine months, through funding secured from The National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, we have been working with a group of twelve people, both writers and artists/illustrators, with the focus of creating new children’s books. This pilot programme has been a major success, and we are excited by the level of talent we have uncovered. We are confident that we will begin a children’s publishing programme in 2010.
The decision to publish a children’s series is not an isolated notion but a strategic attempt by YES! Publications to build on previous publications and continue to explore cultural and identity issues affecting citizens of this city. Publishing children’s books will not be a prescriptive answer to cultural and political divides, but it will be a deliberate attempt to begin to create positive ideas and alternative messages. These children’s books will be a gentle attempt to begin to move in this direction.
Over the last number of years we have been publishing other titles through our Fingerpost series, and these titles should be seen as forerunners to this children’s series. They were: A City of Culture? Edited by Eamon Baker (2004), City as a Playground, A Children’s Guide to the Derry City Council Area, Edited by Clionagh Boyle (2004), City of Technology, Edited by Anthony Hutton (2005), City of Change, by Demot Kelly (2006), and the first edition of Diversecity (2009).
In 2010 we will set up a new children’s publishing company, a sister company to YES! to meet this niche market opportunity.
New Building
We currently have two members of staff, and we will be employing at least one other member of staff in 2010 to work with us in our new children’s company. We are also exploring setting up a studio space for our authors and illustrators; a place where they can come and use our specialised computers, software, scanners, and photographic equipment and be nurtured and encouraged in a creative environment. We also have plans for a bookshop on the ground floor in the new proposed building.
We are excited about the opportunity to be part of a new collaborative building and collaborative working environment and look forward with optimism to a bright future for YES! Publications.