After two weeks of visiting publishers the US firm Knopf said they would take all three titles including The Book of Photography

After two weeks of visiting publishers, the US firm Knopf said they would take all three titles, including The Book of Photography.Americans are always good at taking on new ideas and backing a hunch. It is, however, still negotiating the re-entry into the Teachers Superannuation Scheme of 30 members who were wrongly advised to opt out.Colonial deputy general manager Sandy Grant last weekblamed the delay on procedures laid down by regulators.During the week, Colonial lost a bid to run the privatised Teachers Pensions Agency.. At first we didn't publish our own books, just sold them to other publishers around the world. As a result we did not have to tie up capital in books that had yet to sell.

We still use the same type of approach to publishers - a dummy with a jacket and some laid-out spreads and a flow-chart showing what would be on each page.Our first sales trip was to the Frankfurt Book Fair. But it was on our next trip, to New York, that we got our big breakthrough. From the outset, all DK books were more highly illustrated than our competitors'. But with reference books, you need to be as close the real world as possible.We have a saying at DK: "Through the picture I see reality; through the word I understand it." The point is that if you want to imprint something on the mind, a picture is much better. Actually, I'm not really a book publisher - I'm someone who is interested in how you communicate information.When we started out we had pounds 10,000 in capital, plus a pounds 10,000 overdraft facility from Barclays with my house as the security Fortunately we never needed it. Although we now have 10 offices around Covent Garden, I still use the simple pine desk I worked on at home.Traditionally, the problem with this sort of book - reference works - is that the people who made them came from Oxbridge.

And if you go there, the importance of pictures gets drummed out of you. Although we live in an entirely visual world they believe we can use words to describe it They create a conceptual world that overlays the real world. That was when I decided to set up Dorling Kindersley.My partner, Christopher Dorling, was a cartographer, but he was working at Mitchell Beazley as a salesman. We used to meet secretly in a Chelsea restaurant, where nobody would recognise us, and plotted how to set up the company. Our first offices were the back room of the semi-detached house in Kennington, south London, where I live. We did it because that was the kind of book I wanted to read.I first thought of publishing practical reference books while I was working as the art director for another London publisher, Mitchell Beazley.

After I left them, following an unrelated disagreement in 1974, I realised there was no other publisher to which I could go with my idea. MY HEART sank when I saw the burnt-out ruin of our printer. Where the old Amsterdam warehouse had stood was an enormous hole filled with ashes and rubble. The steel girders that held up the roof had gone limp in the middle.