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.

Then came its first big seller – Counting my Chickens by the Duchess of Devonshire. This has now sold over 90,000 copies in hardback and continues to sell year in year out.

In 2006 Long Barn began to publish fiction, particularly focusing on first novels. These have included THE EXTRA LARGE MEDIUM by HELEN SLAVIN, THE GOOD THIEF`S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM by CHRIS EWAN. This is the first of a series of caper-crime novels about a man who writes novels about a burglar, and also happens to be one. It will be followed in 2009 by THE GOOD THIEF`S GUIDE TO PARIS.

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 Although we do not publish many books, every single one receives maximum attention.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.