Beenham mother, with baby in tow, uses lockdown to launch independent publishing house
Cahill Davis invites submissions from authors from all backgrounds
A Beenham woman with baby in tow has used her daughter’s lockdown homeschool schedule to start an independent publishing house.
Cassandra Davis started her own independent publishing house at the end of lockdown, while looking after her two children, who are now seven years old and 11 months.
Working from her Beenham home in an area that doesn’t even have 4G phone signal or decent Wi-Fi speeds, Cassandra set up Cahill Davis Publishing from her sofa, with the baby in the bouncer and an A3 paper, handwritten school schedule stuck to the fridge.
“I knew that for us, as a family, having a schedule during the day was going to be key to us staying sane in lockdown,” she said.
“Together with my eldest daughter, we came up with a schedule that had time for learning as well as playing.
“Having that in place meant that I could find the time for me, which led to having the time I needed to plan this business out before I launched.”
Cahill Davis Publishing was born from a love for books, stemming from the weekend trips to the library Cassandra took with her grandmother as a child. She wrote her first book in 2012 while she was working full-time and knows the pitfalls of writing and self-publishing for authors.
After connecting with many like-minded authors on social media, she realised that even with the rise in eBooks and self-publishing, there was still a need for a more traditional publishing house approach.
“There are so many things to consider when self-publishing that it becomes a business in itself and you spend more time on admin than you do writing, which is why I set up CDP.
“Our aim is to combine the best of the traditional publishing team approach with the advances in technology and the rise of social media.
“So you can find the perfect audience for your book, without needing to do everything yourself.”
With a formal background in business and social media marketing, but a passion for writing and publishing, Cassandra’s aim for Cahill Davis Publishing (CDP) is to combine the traditional structure of a publishing house with the responsiveness and
flexibility of digital publishing.
Lockdown has given her the opportunity to start the business she has wanted to for the last eight years.
“There are so many amazing stories out there, that not enough people get to read because the marketing of them doesn’t reach the right audience. Or they never make it off an editor’s to-be-read pile in the first place.
“We want to change that by creating a bespoke marketing plan for each and every book we publish, so your book finds the people who will love reading it.”
CDP is currently looking for full-length commercial fiction in English and is happy to receive submissions from authors from all backgrounds and without agents.
www.cahilldavispublishing.co.uk
