Fidra Books is a publisher and bookseller based in Edinburgh, and run by Malcolm and Vanessa Robertson.

We published our first book in 2005 and have grown steadily since then with around a dozen titles planned for the forthcoming year. In November 2007, we opened Edinburgh's only specialist children's bookshop.

Encouraged by the bookshop’s success, we decided to open The Fidra Gallery, a summer exhibition of work by children’s illustrators. In September 2009, the gallery became The Edinburgh Bookshop.

Vanessa deals with the day-to-day running; supervises the selection of the stock for the bookshop; liases with customers, publishers and stockists of our titles; looks after our authors; organises events at the shop and oversees orders placed directly with Fidra Books. She also writes regularly (ish) on the Fidra Blog about books, bookselling and life as an independent publisher.

Malcolm is our technical whizz. He builds and looks after our website; oversees the production of our books and makes the numbers add up. Formerly a university physicist, Malcolm's also in charge of selecting the academic stock for the shops.

Andrew is The Edinburgh Bookshop manager, in charge of the day-to-day running of the bookshop, buying and author events. He’s worked in the book trade for 12 years, many of which at independent bookshops such as Methvens. Andrew also is a self-taught artist, which comes in very handy for our window displays. You’ll also find him on the Fidra Blog.

Becky is our Publishing Assistant: she sends out orders, deals with customer queries, proofreads and typesets titles before they go to the printers and writes marketing material. You might also find her helping in the bookshop and organising events, as well as writing on the blog. Her favourite Fidra titles are Jill's Gymkhana and The Winter of Enchantment.

The rest of the team include Lila and Polly. Lila is our part-time bookseller at The Edinburgh Bookshop: originally from America, she is studying for a PhD in Scottish literature. Polly our part-time bookseller at The Children's Bookshop is a huge fan of the work of children’s illustrators. Between them, they can probably find the right book for any reader. There's also Magnus (aged 10) who's already a shrewd judge of publishers' proof copies, and Teaga (our Leonberger mountain dog) who's a 8 stone ball of fur and who already has a regular stream of fans visiting to give her a biscuit.