What we do

Visual Editions, nicknamed VE, is a London-based book publisher, started in early 2009 by Anna and Britt. The idea for VE comes from our joint love of books and a (mischievous) desire to do things differently, so that everything we do translates into a new experience for our readers, and for all the writers and designers we work with. What we do is make sure we turn all that love and mischief into beautifully, lovingly, wonderfully written and crafted books.

We wondered why there is such a large divide between text-driven literary books on the one hand and picture-driven art and design books on the other. And we wondered why this divide seems so extreme, when most of us compute visuals in our everyday more than ever before. We believe this visual everydayness adds to the way we read, it adds to the way we experience what we read and the way we absorb and understand the way stories are told: through words and pictures.

We also wondered

Why does the mainstream book publishing world seem to spend so much of its time and energy finding the best formula for how things should be done, when most times, the best books and experiences actually come out of how things shouldn’t be done.

Our belief, put simply, is that books should be as visually interesting as the stories they tell; with the visual feeding into and adding to the storytelling as much as the words on the page.

That’s why we only publish literary fiction and non-fiction books that are as visually breathtaking, and compelling as the writing is.

Even if that means publishing books that others say are impossible to produce; or books that aren’t worthy of being called a book; or illustrated tales of children stories gone wrong; or classics whose breakthrough brilliance and lustre has been buried and lost over the years. So, while we’re not the first to discover these kinds of books, we are the first to bring them together, celebrate and think of them in this way.

We call it visual writing. And our strap line is “Great looking stories”.