Gillian and Verner Bickley are Co-Founders of PROVERSE HONG KONG (Prose and Verse), initially as a small press. In Hong Kong for thirty years, Gillian has recently concluded a career as a University teacher of English Literature in different countries (but mainly in Hong Kong). Verner has led cultural and educational departments and projects in many parts of the world. Together, we’re expanding the work that Proverse does, drawing on our combined academic, administrative and teaching experience as well as on our combined and varied long-term experience of reading, research, writing, editing, reviewing, publishing and authorship.
PROVERSE HONG KONG (Prose and Verse) has published poetry, non-fiction, young teens and academic books. As well as these, we are particularly interested in looking at Biographies, Memoirs and Diaries, and academic works in the humanities, social sciences, cultural studies, linguistics and education. We are very happy, after initial discussion, to consider novels, short stories and poetry.
A particular feature is our production and publication of audio texts of some of our books. These may be read by the writer or by professional readers or actors.
We also mentor writers and authors to improve manuscripts which other publishers will eventually publish and we occasionally run creative writing workshops, which lead to publishable work.
We are strong at organizing author events in Hong Kong and are members of several Hong Kong societies, both general and professional.
We co-operate with other publishers, providing editorial input and assistance, research (including picture and archival research), proof-reading and indexing. We are happy to consider co-publishing. We are happy to work with texts by non-native-speaker writers of English as well as by native English-speaking writers.
We can provide advice with UK contracts and have access to a range of author help-sheets, through membership of a UK-based professional society.
Distribution beyond Hong Kong can be a problem for books published in Hong Kong. We now have an additional distributor in the UK. All our books, whatever their subject, are now distributed in the UK. PROVERSE books are entered into the Nielsen BookData data-base and we obtain British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data blocks (CIP blocks) for our books; a detail much valued by authors. This ensures international awareness of our titles and our books are accessioned into major UK libraries, including the British Library; one of the strongest guarantees that the fact of authorship will be on permanent record.
We regularly revisit and respond to changes in the international book industry.
We ourselves also continue to write (including for other publishers) and we are happy to collaborate in joint writing projects with other writers.
We have experience in seeking publishing and research funding support.
The authors and writers that PROVERSE best suits are likely to have another day-job and are capable of long hours of disciplined work. They have a story to tell, a person they want to memorialize, a neglect they want to remedy, a record they want to correct. They have a strong interest that they want to share, information or perceptions that they want to offer, skills they want to teach, a contribution to society that they want to make. If you are such a person, let us know if we can help you . . .
We CAN get you published and we CAN find you an audience!
ENQUIRIES to the Commissioning Editor, Proverse Hong Kong: [email protected]
Please mark your enquiry, "Author's initial enquiry".
We will do our best to give you an answer as soon as possible. However, please note that it may take us two weeks or more to reply.
To return to the PROVERSE HONG KONG homepage: Proverse Hong Kong.