They shared an upbeat view of the opportunities in publishing, spurred in part by Guthrie’s personal track record of selling his own ebooks. They saw digital publishing as an exciting opportunity for authors to bring books to market without many of publishing’s historical barriers; and, crucially, understood that the role of the publisher had to change.

With self-publishing so accessible to everyone, it is no longer the case that an author has to find a publisher. Rather, a savvy publisher must ask itself what value it can bring to the author-publisher relationship. Blasted Heath was built on the belief that digital publishing should – and must – be a partnership between author and publisher.

Blasted Heath currently publishes 17 books by 10 authors, with two more authors already announced and around 20 titles in the pipeline. It has a natural bias towards publishing crime fiction, although there are exceptions. The Vanity Game by debut author HJ Hampson, for example, is not strictly crime, although it has been dubbed as heralding a new genre of ‘celebrity noir’. It also has a healthy bias towards publishing Scottish writers, including Ray Banks, Tony Black, Douglas Lindsay, Nigel Bird and Brian Pendreigh.

Blasted Heath recently launched a Blasted Shorts imprint for releasing shorter works. Douglas Lindsay’s The Case of the Stained Glass Window is out now, with short story collections imminent from Ray Banks and Brian Pendreigh. The Blasted Shorts series also includes standalone interviews with best-selling Scottish crime authors including Ian Rankin (out now), William McIlvanney and Peter May (both forthcoming).

Other pending releases by Scottish writers include Ray Banks’ four Cal Innes novels, a new police thriller from Douglas Lindsay, We Were the Hanged Man (plus the remaining four titles in his Barney Thomson series), two new titles from Tony Banks, RIP Robbie Silva and The Ringer, and volume three of The Crime Interviews.

Blasted Heath is also sponsoring the short story competition being run by Bloody Scotland, the crime writing festival, and will publish an anthology of the winning stories during the festival in September.