Whitlands Publishing

Whitlands Publishing Ltd. is an Indie book publishing company situated in the beautiful Pacific Northwest at Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The company was formed in December 1998 by my husband, J. Robert Whittle, and myself as the avenue by which I would publish his books. Whittle soon became a bestselling author and by 2008 he could boast of having 3 bestsellers and together we had won two Independent Publisher Gold Medals (IPPYs) for Loyalty’s Haven and Whispers Across Time.

I became an author in my own right in 2000 by publishing the first of two children’s chapter books in the Moonbeam Series. I followed each with a matching audio book and they have been so popular with young readers we have reprinted several times. They are also utilized in many ESL Classes. In 2007, I became Robert’s co-author and we have so far published three single titles, Whispers Across Time, Race for a Treasure and Yesterdays, A Collection of Short Stories.

By 2011 with 10 novels, two children’s books and various audio products in our collection, despite our ages, we are not ready to stop just yet.

To the question, “Why hasn’t a large publisher picked up your books?” I reply, “We’ve been so busy keeping up to the demands of our fans by producing a book yearly rather than every few years (as a publisher would have done), reprinting others, marketing and, of late, setting up ebooks … we simply haven’t had time to pursue it. We had initially hoped a publisher would have found us but now we’ve gotten into our pattern and also come to realize a few things about the publishing business which make what we have done no doubt the best thing we could have done. We did speak with a number of movie producers over the early years but were told that ‘historicals’ were very expensive to produce and they turned us down. If we were many years younger and still writing books as in the past, it could be a totally different story, but we must be realistic! Our books are different, there is no getting around that. Due to the ‘no sex and no gratuitous violence or swearing’ even bookstores aren’t sure whether to call them children’s books or general reading so it’s worked out immensely well that we have been able to sell them ourselves.

Saying that, we would be most grateful if a publisher, agent or a movie producer were to decide we would be worth the gamble … after all, Family-Friendly content is now exceedingly popular! I guess we were ahead of our time.

To contact Whitlands Publishing: (Note: We do NOT accept manuscripts or publish for others). Please use the contact page on this website or phone us in Victoria BC Canada: 250-477-0192

Thank you.
Joyce Sandilands