Stenlake Publishing has evolved from Richard Stenlake Publishing, which began in 1987 with the publication of a modest booklet about the town of Motherwell. The company is an independent and privately owned commercial trade book publisher and specialises in illustrated local history, transport history and industrial history, with the occasional foray sideways into related non-illustrated areas. Stenlake's books on towns and villages as they used to be are simple and unpretentious and offer a selection of old photographs accompanied by a potted history of the place and informative captions. Although large conurbations such as Dundee and Greenock are featured in the Stenlake list, and tend to be in larger format books which have between 180 and 200 photographs, the company specialises in books on smaller towns and villages.

Sometimes sales of such titles bear no relationship to the resident population - like Old Muirkirk and Glenbuck. The Ayrshire town of Muirkirk, at one time host to a large ironworks, has a population of only about 2,000 and its neighbour, Glenbuck, is a lost village, albeit the one from which Bill Shankly came. Despite this, the book has gone through several reprints. Other recent "obscure" titles include Old Crianlarich, Tyndrum and Bridge of Orchy and the tongue-twisting Old Oldmeldrum. Small print runs and the lack of alternative titles enable small books like this to be profitable.

Because of the localised nature of many Stenlake books, the company sells through a much wider range of outlets than the average trade publisher. The books can be found everywhere from the chain bookstores down to newsagents and corner shops – and, of course, BooksfromScotland.com. Coverage is not restricted to Scotland either. Besides town titles for Cumbria, the list of railway books spans the whole of the UK and the company has a growing list of transport and towns titles for both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Recent commercial successes include Shropshire's Lost Railways, Old Dundalk, and Old South Uist.

Besides an ever-growing list of books on towns, villages and suburbs (over 300 titles in print) the company also produces several popular transport and industrial series including Lost Railways (which are featured by county or region) Wheels around... (road transport), Last days of Steam (pre-Beeching period photographs) and Last days of Colliery Steam (industrial locomotives again photographed in the autumn of their lives). Such specialist material is scrutinised minutely (to see if there are any mistakes!) by the readership and Stenlake are fortunate enough to have eminent experts writing for them, such as Guthrie Hutton (canals and mining), Robert Grieves (road transport), Cyril McIntyre (Irish road transport), and Tom Heavyside (industrial railways).

Stenlake books work at different levels for different people, from those who just wish to flick through an reminisce over the old photographs therein to those wanting to look more into the local history of their town and most of the titles carry a list of recommended further reading for those who want to go deeper into the subject. Above all Stenlake books bring a lot of pleasure into many lives, but none of this perhaps makes sense perhaps until you see the title on your town or village.