Mallee story goes big

HAVING already sold all the initial copies, Ballarat publisher Ten Bag Press have gone back to the printers with its popular title The Mallee Book.

The publication aimed to capture the stories and essence of the townships of the Mallee region and writer and Ten Bag Press founder Adam McNicol said he was immensely proud of the book’s success.

“The Mallee was a passion project, having grown up there I wanted to do something for the place,” he said.

“This book is 10 years learning about publishing and about all the different things that make a good book and putting them all into practice.

“A lot of the other titles I’ve done have gone really well, but this is the first time something that was my idea has taken off hugely.”

Established in 2010, the publishing house has printed a range of other regional based titles as well as some sports and corporate focused publications.

However, having teamed up with five experienced rural documentary photographers, Mr McNicol said this project has been his favourite and most successful yet.

“Since I started the publishing house, we’ve done a whole range of different titles but found the best balance with The Mallee,” he said.

“Because this was a passion project, it was loose, there’s five photographers and I did all the management and writing and so for around two years we would all just wander out the Mallee when we had the chance.

“We decided to lay it out along the old railway lines, I wanted it to be journey of the smaller towns and create a book about these areas that are usually unrecognised all the way out in the country.”

After attracting some online attention for the book pre-release, Mr McNicol said he had to increase his initial printing amount to accommodate all the orders.

“We started a Facebook page and Instagram account for The Mallee Book and I did a couple of little videos of the book getting printed and it just went wild, one reached 30,000 people,” he said.

“I was only going to print 2000 copies, and then we started taking pre-orders and got so many we decided to print 3000 and now mine are all gone but some might still be in stores on shelves.

“About 1000 went online with the other 2000 going to shops all over the place who fully bought them, they aren’t on consignment, so we know those 3000 have been sold in one way or another.”

After the book’s success, Mr McNicol said he decided to print another entire round of copies at Ten Bag Press’ regular family owned printers, Adam’s Print in Geelong.

“Our printers are the best in the business, they do all the stuff for the National Gallery and for the Portrait Gallery in Canberra,” he said.

“They’re a really nice family business and they have this much higher resolution printer, it makes these photos look better on paper than on the screen.”

Having released the book earlier this year in the middle of a pandemic, initially, the team were sceptical.

Yet Mr McNicol said that the lockdown period proved to be a huge positive for the success of the publication.

“Once it got into the second half of the year and I realised that the pandemic was quite possibly going to be positive for this book,” he said.

“I realised people wanted to think about anything but COVID and even travel in their minds and this was the perfect way to do it.”

With orders from all around the country, Mr McNicol said he was impressed by the reaction to his passion project and that people seem to love seeing local stories in high-quality publications.

“People are suddenly starting to see the spot as a tourist destination even though it’s a bit of an unlikely tourist destination,” he said.

“Lots of people have told me that they’re going to use it as a travel guide, which is not something I had thought of.

“We want to do a follow up with one on the Wimmera and could have a series on the different regions.”

To browse their selection of titles or to pre-order a copy of The Mallee visit, tenbagpress.com.au or visit your local Collins to buy one in store.