Long time readers might remember that I launched The Pub Bench about a year, or two, can't remember, ago. Then, as is my way, I moved on to some other new toy and didn't really push it. The site was quite manual to maintain and I had a silly idea that I'd charge for it (ha, foolish girl, charging for a service! Whatever next.) So the project was mothballed.

But I think more than ever there's a need for this sort of thing - a place where publishers and other people in the book trade can confidentially share their concerns with their industry peers and swap advice, experience and points of view.

The Pub Bench

It's the sort of exchange that happens naturally at industry events in the bar - but we can't all be in the bar the whole time. (Well, some of us can, but that gets counter productive very quickly.) So I've rejuvenated the site - and, crucially, thanks to a clever Wordpress plug in, this time I don't need to maintain it (because we all know what my attention span is like).

So why not join up. It's basically a forum where you can post questions and answer other posters. You have to register to post, but it's free and you are anonymous.

Here's some more info:

The Publishers Benchmarking Forum allows publishers to

- compare notes on what’s going on in the market, to help you see how your company is performing, relatively. This is known as benchmarking.

There’s a big difference between thinking you’re doing something wrong, and knowing that your challenges are the fault of the market. It doesn’t mean the challenges go away, but it does mean you’re more able to put things into perspective and maintain your confidence in your abilities. And when things are going well, you can judge whether that’s because of your genius or because of market forces.

- share ideas, techniques, tricks and insights to improve the running of your company. This is known as, er, sharing!

It’s such a shame to have to pay for outside help when you could get help for free, and so tantalising to know how much time and money you could save if only you could find out – NOW – how to do something yourself. The Pub Bench will feature tips and insights – by the community, for the community – into areas like editing, rules of good jacket design, how to prepare files for printers, how to create ebooks, and more hands-on, technical advice to save you time and money. Even if you still outsource the work, you will have insight into what’s involved so you can see if your supplier is working efficiently.

The Pub Bench