I’m so happy to tell you that Five Simple Steps has been acquired by Craig Lockwood and Amie Duggan. The dynamic duo behind Handheld conference, The Web Is, FoundersHub and BeSquare. Before I tell you again how thrilled I am, let me take you way back to 2005…

Next year, it will be ten years since I wrote a blog post called Five Simple Steps to better typography. The motivation behind the post was simple: the elements of good typesetting are not difficult, and, with a few simple guidelines, anyone could create good typographic design. That one article became part of a small series of five posts: five simple steps, with each article containing five simple steps. It was a simple formula, but it turned out pretty well.

Soon after that initial post, I wrote Five Simple Steps to designing grid systems for the web, then the same for colour theory. This was now 2006 and I’d just left my job at the BBC. It was a dreary October day and, whilst sat in a coffee shop in Bristol after just visiting one of my first freelance clients, I was talking over email to the Britpack mailing list about compiling my posts into a book. In 2008, Emma and I hired my brother to help me design it and in early 2009, we finally released it. And with the release of that first book, Five Simple Steps Publishing was born. But we didn’t know it at the time.

Over subsequent months and years other authors saw what we produced and wanted us to publish their books. Before we really knew it, we were a publisher with a catalogue of titles and providing a uniquely British voice to the web community. But publishing is tough. As we found out.

All over the world, publishers’ profits are being eroded; from production costs to cost-difference in digital versions. And – except for a couple of notable companies – you see it in the physical books that were being produced for our customers by competitors: terrible paper quality, templatised design, automated eBook production. Everywhere, margins are being squeezed, and the product really suffers.

Our biggest challenge was that Five Simple Steps started as a side project, and always stayed that way. Over time, we just couldn’t commit the time and money it needed to really scale. We had so much we wanted to do – there was never any shortage of great authors wanted to write a book – but could never find the time and energy when we had to run a client services business. Oh, and also during this time, Emma and I had two children. Running and growing two businesses is somewhat challenging when you’re being thrown up on and have barely four hours sleep a night.

So about a year ago, Emma and I sat in our dining room and faced a tough decision: wind down Five Simple Steps, sell it, or give it one more year. We chose the latter. It was a tough year, but Emma, Nick and the team worked to make the Pocket Guide series a great success. So much so, it required tons of work and compounded the problem we had: Five Simple Steps needed to take centre stage rather than be a side project.

A month ago today, Emma and I announced that Five Simple Steps was closing. The team were joining Monotype, and Five Simple Steps could no longer be sustainable as a side project. The writing had been on the wall for a while, but the stop was abrupt for us, the authors and the team. We tried to find the right people to take the company forward before the sale, but we couldn’t find the right people. Luckily, immediately following the announcement, a few people got in touch about seeing if they could help. Two of those people really said some interesting things and got us excited about the possibilities: Craig Lockwood and Amie Duggan.

Craig and Amie live locally in Wales. They run conferences: Handheld conference and The Web Is conference later this year. They also run a co-working space in Cardiff called FoundersHub. They have a background in education and training, and together with their conferences and BeSquare – a conference video streaming site – they have the ecosystem in place to take Five Simple Steps to places we could only dream of. As you may gather, we’re chuffed to bits that Five Simple Steps is going to live on. Not only that, but it’s in Wales and in the competent hands of friends who we know are going to give it the attention it deserves.

Emma and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.