Local book publisher writes its own headlines by moving into a brand new £400,000 headquarters in Harborough

A local book publisher is writing its own headlines by moving into a brand new £400,000 headquarters in Market Harborough.

Troubador Publishing are busy penning its very own success story after relocating from Kibworth Harcourt into the new warehouse and office base on the town’s Airfield Business Park.

The company is expanding its warehousing and distribution facilities as demand grows.

Troubador Publishing will also house all its staff in a “purpose-built office environment that includes dedicated meeting spaces”.

“The £400,000 investment positions the company for growth in the author services market and will enable it to broaden its book distribution operation to other publishers.

“In parallel moves, the company has improved its book distribution capabilities for its authors and publisher partners through a special arrangement with wholesaler Gardners Books, investment in the Nielsen PubEasy book buying system for retailers and by offering sales representation from its own warehouse through Star Book Sales,” said the company.

“Significant investment in online systems now allows the company to automatically send daily Price & Availability feeds direct to Gardners and to all bookshops using PubEasy, which makes ordering titles simple for any retailer.”

Troubador’s purpose-built office space features fully-equipped meeting rooms and a large meeting space to host events.

It will include a bookshop where titles from the company’s Matador, Book Guild and Troubador imprints will be sold direct.

Managing Director Jeremy Thompson said: “This marks a significant step up for the company as we have changed the way in which we distribute our titles to the retail trade for the better, with new arrangements that are faster, cheaper and more robust than when previously using a third-party distribution company.

“By investing heavily in new systems and processes, we can not only offer our authors and retail customers a better service, but we reduce our environmental impact by minimising road miles for our books.”

Troubador bought the new premises last June.

It has since moved to bring together stocks from three different warehouses into a single huge warehouse.

A new environmentally-friendly office building has also been built from scratch.

It features solar panels, automatic lights and super-insulation.

“The moving process was completed in December last year in a carefully coordinated move that kept all book production and marketing operations fully functional, and the warehouse open to fulfil orders at this crucial time,” said Troubador.

“The new arrangements will particularly help Matador’s self-publishing authors, as daily price and availability information being fed to retailers and wholesalers, and the ability for any bookshop to order through either Gardners or Nielsen’s PubEasy online ordering system, means their books being as available as any other publisher’s.”

Operations Director Jane Rowland said: “We have been aiming for some time to strengthen our book distribution capabilities as we knew that our distribution could be done more efficiently and at a lesser cost (financially and environmentally) if we managed this ourselves.

“This has meant significant investment in both back office systems to supply P&A data daily to retailers and our warehouse infrastructure to manage the distribution process,” said Jane.

“Both are paying off as we are seeing increased sales of titles across our imprints already.”