Long Barn Books was founded in 1997 by author Susan Hill who, as a lifelong admirer of Virginia Woolf, wanted to emulate what she and her husband Leonard had done in founding the Hogarth Press in the 1920`s.

The company takes its name from the Long Barn which houses its offices, across the garden to Susan Hill`s farmhouse in Gloucestershire.

Until 2006, Long Barn Books published only non-fiction, and brought out books by such authors as Ronald Blythe, Roy Strong, Stanley Wells and Quentin Crewe.

In 2002 came its first big seller – Counting my Chickens by the Duchess of Devonshire. This has now sold over 80,000 copies in hardback and continues to sell year in year out.

In 2006 Long Barn published its first fiction. We have run a First Novel competition for two years and plan to continue. The very first First Novel was The Extra Large Medium by Helen Slavin. As a result of publication Helen was taken on by a major literary agent, the novel is being published in mass market paperback in September 2007 by Simon and Schuster, who have also taken Helen`s second novel, and The Extra Large Medium has sold to several countries abroad.

Our 2007 First Novel is The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan – see the page about this under New Books

The competition to find a First Novel to publish in 2008 is now open for entries.

Long Barn Books became a limited company in 2006. We are small but we were delighted to have been called ‘the small publishing company with the Big reputation.’ Although we do not publish many books, every single one receives maximum attention.

In order to minimise overheads, for the first years of the company`s existence, we did our own distribution –which meant packing all the parcels, just as Virginia Woolf did !

But we are now distributed by HarperCollins and sold by Simon and Schuster which means we can focus all our attention on editorial – buying books, producing them, and looking after our authors.

The foreign rights in most of are titles are sold by Sheil Land Associates.