Writing the brief piece on the new British Columbia Probate Kit got me thinking how books like this make us different from many, if not most mainstream book publishers. The new book is technically the 20th Edition. The first edition was published almost 40 years ago.

Most books are first editions. Their publishers print and market them as best they can, but they stay in print only as long as they meet sales targets. Works of fiction (excepting the rare best-seller) have quite short lives in print. Non-fiction works tend to stay around a bit longer, but very few publishers continue producing new editions.

Our longest-lived book is the British Columbia Do Your Own Divorce Kit, originally published as the Divorce Guide for British Columbia in 1971. Starting a Successful Business in Canada is not far behind: now in its 18th edition it has been in print well over 35 years.

In our Start & Run series, 15 of the titles currently in print are a 2nd or 3rd or later edition (one is now in its 9th edition). Many of them have been continuously in print for at least two decades, and many of those editions have been reprinted numerous times.

You will find similar “multi-edition” titles spread across all the categories in which we publish.

Our purpose is to help people help themselves, whether they are seeking a divorce, writing a will, starting a new business, or running a small business and looking to enhance their knowledge of topics like bookkeeping or pricing. We look for authors who are experts in a subject area and can explain it clearly.

We do not produce as many new titles each year as many other publishers because we don′t just “forget” last year′s titles. We invest time and energy to keep good books in print and selling and we′re reasonably successful at doing that.

All of this also means we are quite selective in the titles we publish. We want every one of them to be successful and to establish itself as a book which sells year after year. We do not succeed with every title we publish, but we do succeed with a high percentage of them and we are proud of that.

As I said at the start, we are a different kind of publisher.