About us

Andy Rivers started Byker Books back in 2008 with a vague notion of publishing the working class lads and lasses who weren't taken seriously by the big publishers or agents. The people who didn't have degrees in 'creative writing' but had crap jobs that sapped their souls instead, the people who didn't have a 'journey' to bore people to death with but did have an idea for a bloody good story that other people from the estates would enjoy, the people who didn't get glowing reports at their great schools but instead had to battle their siblings for the one pen in the house to write anything down before doing their paper round in the rain. 

That's who Byker Books was for. People like us. 

It was never about the sales or the money, it was never about slavishly trying to perfect SEO on a glorified search engine named after a river in Brazil (work it out) and it was never, ever about shafting the writers for profit - Byker Books was different to the others. During it's lifespan our tiny independent press published over one hundred previously unknown authors through our 'Radgepacket' collections (some of whom went on to get book deals elsewhere) put out twelve paperbacks and published a number of others via electronic means.  

Then in 2016 finances, and life in general, meant it was over. We reverted all of the book rights back to their respective authors and BB ceased to exist as anything other than an outlet for our Andy's own work (like he ever did any...) The books all disappeared from Amazon and our site was wound up. As you can imagine this was a gut-wrenching decision but when we started Byker Books it was a much needed initiative for the kind of writer detailed above but the advent of mass-market self-publishing of e-books pretty much negated any need for that and left it impossible for us to continue in the same vein as before.

Then in 2021 Andy was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer and had time to read a lot of books...

Meaning that in 2023 after he'd punched it's lights out ('cos he's 'nails' apparently!) he had a nagging feeling of unfinished business and a much greater appreciation of life and the time he had left. This resulted in the Byker Books substack page which gave people the opportunity to subscribe a small monthly amount for original sweary fiction.

Then in early 2024 after surgery to put him back to as near normal as he could be (if you've met him you'll know 'normal' is a bit of a stretch!) he decided to write a follow up to his hit 'Byker Crime' series (The Changing Man - it's a WIP) and put together a more accesible website to keep everyone who was interested in the loop...and so here we are. That's the history of BB in a tidy little nutshell. 

And the future? 

Well, going forward it'll be less pressured this time and more of a hobby than a business but we're thinking of another Radgepacket collection and probably a few more novels so watch this space.