Five years ago, 20-year-old literature student Jamie McGarry took his first faltering steps towards setting up a publishing house in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. He called it Valley Press, and the rest is history – a history untold until now.

For VP's 50th book (published on the fifth anniversary of the first book), Jamie has collected the finest extracts from all 49 previous titles into this wide-ranging anthology of poetry, fiction, biography and trivia. Each chapter comes with its own brief introduction: anecdotes explaining how each publication on the eclectic list came into existence. A literary journey, a business lesson and a cautionary tale rolled into one, this is an utterly unique publication, offering a fascinating insight into today's publishing landscape.

Jamie McGarry was born in Norwich in 1988, and grew up in North Wales and Yorkshire. Now based in Scarborough, he runs the independent publisher Valley Press. His own poetry collection, The Dead Snail Diaries, was published in 2011 (ISBN 9780956251992).