Two not-so-young publishers moved to Inverness and set about adapting their skills to the Scottish publishing scene.

Seeing a gap in the market for a series of regionally focused photographic books, they set about the task of photographing selected areas of the country. The year was 2007; yes, the year the financial storm clouds were gathering ahead of the catastrophic crash of 2008.

This was not a good year to launch a new business but, against the odds, enough books were sold to keep going and in the face of this rough weather, the fledgling Ness Publishing achieved lift-off. Founder Colin Nutt concocted a scheme for covering the whole of Scotland with our ‘Picturing Scotland’ books. This originally envisaged a series of 20 titles, but today it numbers 36 books and there is indeed a Picturing Scotland title for every part of the country.

Highlights? April 2014 stands out as the month when Picturing Scotland sales passed the 100,000-copy mark. Four-and-a-half years later, sales reached 200,000, meaning that the books had contributed £1million worth of retail value to the Scotland’s tourism economy. OK, that’s a tiny part of this sector, but we hope that the books are doing their bit in providing ongoing promotion of Scotland: they enable people to ‘take Scotland with them’ and share it with others, some of whom will then make their own visit.

How have the books done so well? This is where, I trust, the story becomes relevant to a wide cross-section of Business Scotland readers. As well as being well produced and widely accepted by the ‘obvious’ areas of the retail trade, innovative sales and marketing ideas have greatly extended their range and areas of use. Predominant in this field is the ability to add a customer’s branding to the books, meaning their property/venue/business adorns the outside of their copies, adding a promotional dimension to that business, as well as better sales. This has opened up new markets such as hotels – see below and
www.nesspublishing.co.uk/book_jackets/ .

As well as offering external branding, we can provide internal personalising of the books that enables them to tie in with any kind of event held at hotels, country houses and conference centres, from weddings to corporate events.

So, if your business is anywhere on the tourism spectrum, Picturing Scotland books could be profitable for you …