Try, try and try again – the big league beckons for publisher

PHILLIP Caplan and Tony Hannan were two rugby league writers with a dream.

Today they are running a successful small publishing company which helps to spread the word, not just about the subject which is their particular passion, but of all things northern.

When they first established Scratching Shed, the idea was to have a small company which would publish books on that most beleaguered of sports, rugby league.

Unfairly dubbed the sport that exists "along the M62 corridor", rugby league is a sport that needs its champions and few are more ready to champion the sport than Caplan and Hannan.

"We've both been writing about rugby league for years and we met on a radio show several years ago," says Caplan. "Tony had written a book about the game, but he was struggling to find a publisher. He didn't want to self-publish, simply because, like the sport, work which is self-published tends to be marginalised. So we decided to set up the company."

The company launched in September 2008, with Last of the Dinosaurs: The Kevin Ashcroft Story. Author Maurice Bamford, well known to fans of rugby league, told the story of the former Great Britain player.

Caplan says: "We were sensible about it. We knew we were producing something for a niche market. We decided it would be sensible to do a first print run of 1,000 and see how the book sold. The aim has always been to have a small company that can finance itself and that's what we've achieved."

While it has a long way to go before it is playing in the big leagues, Scratching Shed has done remarkably well for a young publishing company.

The first book sold well enough to finance the second, which sold well enough to finance the third, and so on and so on.

Last year the company published ten books, there are ten to be published this year and already one on the slate for February 2011.

"It's gone exceptionally well," says Caplan.

At the end of 2009, Scratching Shed was given an unexpected feather in its cap when the Times was picking its top ten books on rugby league for people to buy as Christmas presents. "I actually rang the newspaper to ask if the list was just arbitrary, or if it was ranking the books as a 'top ten' and I was told that it was definitely in order," says Caplan. Which meant that Scratching Shed books had secured spots one, two and three, with Down and Under by Dave Hadfield, 1895 and All That by Tony Collins and Tries and Prejudice by Tony Hannan.

Caplan says: "It was such a fantastic accolade but more than that, it kind of justified what we were trying to do. We're not in a big market, what we are trying to achieve we'll only ever do in a niche market but we always thought it was worth it.

"Having the top three books in the list was almost like a validation of that."

The first six books took rugby league as the central theme. In August last year, however, the company published its first book with no connection to the game.

As well as writing about rugby league, Caplan runs two bookshops, in Leeds and in Rotherham. "One day someone came in with a manuscript, which he had found in his father's attic," says Caplan.

The manuscript told of G Norman Davison, who had been captured during the Second World War and kept prisoner in Libya before escaping with the help of the Italian resistance. "It was a wonderful piece of work," says Caplan.

"We had always planned to expand and we always said that we would want to publish works about Northern culture."

This has included books on a history of northern comedy, amateur dramatics, boxing and football.

"While we have moved away from exclusively rugby books, we are definitely still very much entrenched in our identity as a Northern publisher."

Giving the 13-man game 'a much-needed voice'

Dave Craven

JUST as finding coverage of rugby league in the national media can sometimes be a lost cause, so can the search for books concerning the sport.

Hidden away amid shelf after shelf of bland autobiographies from generic footballers, many of who have achieved comparatively little and

have even less to say about their mundane life stories, you may find a few publications involving the 13-man game.

Yet there are many fascinating and intriguing tales to be told from the sport and there is undoubtedly a market for it – albeit a niche one – so the work of Scratching Shed Publishing is certainly important.

Given the mis-informed but widely-held view that rugby league only takes place "up North", most publishers rarely take a second look at a project unless it involves one of Super League's biggest names. Even then, it helps if they have played rugby union as well a la Iestyn Harris and Jason Robinson.

But Phil Caplan and Tony Hannan's willingness to approach all subject matter, no matter how minor they might be seen to be, is crucial in giving this marginalised sport a much-needed voice while also providing another valuable resource.