Finch Publishing celebrates 25th Anniversary

Finch Publishing is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Founder Rex Finch said he is ‘pleased (and slightly amazed)’ to be celebrating the occasion.

The company launched in 1992. Finch, who had previously worked at Doubleday, said when he started out, ‘the concept behind the business was that it would be a backlist nonfiction publishing house with a narrow band of categories: parenting, child care, health, relationships and social issues’. ‘These were the genres I felt most comfortable with in those days,’ he said.

The publisher is still best known for its parenting category, including bestselling titles such as Steve Biddulph’s Manhood, which was first published in 1995, and Raising Boys, which is now in its fourth edition.

The publisher also launched the Finch Memoir Prize in 2010, with the aim of ‘encouraging Australian writers, published and unpublished, to commit to paper their life stories and thus add to the body of Australian creative non-fiction’. The 2017 prize was awarded in February this year to Anne Tonner for Cold Vein, an account of her daughter’s battle with anorexia.

In 2008, Finch was awarded the George Robertson award for long and distinguished service to the publishing industry.

Twenty-five years on, Finch says the business has ‘had to accommodate regularly to changes in the book market, and move adroitly in tight times’. ‘However, the biggest achievement is that we still get excited by new books for our list and we have an office full of laughter to balance the hard work.’

Finch Publishing celebrated with an event on 6 October, attended by authors Biddulph, Andrew Fuller, and Peter Berner, as well as many other past and present authors, editors and collaborators.

Category: Local news