far from the madding crowd

I was talking to Stewart, my Scottish friend, as we we watched our sons boot the ball round at Auskick. We were talking about the boom in Scottish independent publishing and picking up on Henry Rosenbloom's point that most of the strong independents are in Melbourne (at least outside of Sydney) in this country while the biggies are in Sydney. The theory was evolved that you need to be a little distance from the established centre and big players for there to be enough independence of outlook, enough oxygen, to survive. London is then the hub of the big publishers in the UK and the independents tend to be outside. I wouldn't want to push this argument too far - look at the strength of the independents in London - say Snowbooks or Profile for example - but crunchy food for thought.