About Vertebrate Publishing
At Vertebrate we're passionate about each and every book we publish, and we're fanatical about the great outdoors, be it mountain biking, cycling, rock climbing or hill walking. We just want to be out there doing it (particularly as it's wall-to-wall blue sky outside as we write this!). Based in Sheffield, on the doorstep of the Peak District, we're blessed with access to world-class mountain biking and climbing and this provides the ongoing inspiration for our ever-expanding range of books.
We're the publishing imprint of award-winning design agency Vertebrate Graphics, and we released our first title (Dark Peak Mountain Biking - True Grit Trails) in 2004 to critical acclaim. BIKEmagic.com called Dark Peak Mountain Biking "a very high-quality volume and certainly far and away the best Peak guide we've come across" and Singletrack Magazine were also impressed: "...one of the best guides to the Peak District we have come across."
We've now expanded our range of mountain biking guidebooks to 13, which cover most corners of the UK, and there's a few more in the pipeline too. Mountain Bike Rider (MBR) Magazine called our MTB guides “…a series of glossy, highly polished and well researched guidebooks to some of the UK’s favourite riding spots.” That’s certainly our plan, and we’re almost there. We want to provide MTB'ers with well-researched, informative, functional, inspirational and great-looking MTB guidebooks that document the superb riding across the length and breadth of the UK. So if you want to go riding somewhere, you can count on us to point you in the right direction.
But we don't just publish mountain biking guidebooks. We're developing a range of hillwalking guidebooks to England and Wales, and we also have a number of popular cycling guidebooks. Being local climbers, we also have a couple of local climbing guidebooks on our list, including the guide to Peak District Bouldering.
In January 2009 we published our first narrative title, the autobiography of British rock climbing legend Jerry Moffatt, co-written with Irish writer Niall Grimes. Critically acclaimed, Revelations has proven to be a great success and scooped the Grand Prize at the 2009 Banff Mountain Book Festival - one of the biggest prizes in publishing in the outdoor, adventure, and environment genres. With the hardback edition sold through, the book is now available in trade paperback.
In late 2009 we secured the UK and Irish rights to American alpinist Steve House's Boardman Tasker Prize-winning title Beyond the Mountain, and we published this in trade paperback in the UK in early 2010. Our autobiography of British rock climber Ron Fawcett - co-written with Ed Douglas - was published in March 2010 and went on to win the 2010 Boardman Tasker Prize.
We also produce many leading outdoor titles for other publishers including the Mountain Leader and Walking Group Leader Schemes (MLTUK) and rock climbing guidebooks for the Fell and Rock Climbing Club, and the British Mountaineering Council.
If you think there's a book that needs publishing and that would be right up our street, read our notes on submissions and then get in touch.
See you out there!