Hamish MacDonald (author)


Hamish MacDonald is the author of four novels and an independent publisher who hand-binds all his books. He has lived in Canada and Scotland.
In 1999 MacDonald wrote and self-published his first novel. DoubleZero, a Y2K-themed novel, was well received on the underground ‘zine community in Toronto, being Broken Pencil magazine's Spring 2000 "Book of the Issue", and was sold in major bookstores across Canada. The review in Toronto's NOW magazine, written by Bert Archer, said "Amid the dystopian clamour, a thoughtful, light, original and -- just for a change -- utopian look at the beginning of the new millennium."
In 2006 MacDonald released his second and third novels, The Willies and Idea in Stone, under his own imprint: typesetting, printing and binding each copy himself from a home studio in Scotland. His fourth novel Finitude which deals with the possibilities of future climate chaos was published under the same imprint in 2009. As an example of the growing subgenre of speculative fiction known as climate fiction or Cli-fi, Finitude has begun to appear as a text on university syllabi for courses examining climate change in fiction.

Indie publishing

As well as being an indie publisher, MacDonald is active in promoting simple printing and bookbinding techniques which require minimal training and little or no specialist equipment. His No Media Kings article on this subject is one of their most comprehensive and popular, and he teaches workshops on hand book-binding at events such as the Edinburgh Independent Radical Book Fair. He also hosts the free podcast 'DIY Book', which teaches aspiring novelists how to write, make, and sell their own books.