21 years of the Hopewell/Huber books – Part 1

How it all started

Barry Hopewell reflects on how the HopeWell publisher came into existence to help keep the English Huber School operational.

Our book Piercing the Eggshell tells the story of Bruno & Louise Huber and their astrological psychology. The English Huber School was founded by Richard Llewellyn and Pam Tyler in 1983, also becoming known as API(UK).

Richard Llewellyn was the English Huber School Principal for 8 years until 1991, and became Principal Emeritus when he sold the school on to Joyce Hopewell, who became its principal for 12 years until 2003.

2003 Crisis

By 2003, the situation was significantly changing, and the School faced major challenges. After Bruno’s death in 1999, the main inspiration for gathering new students had gone. Louise and their son Michael continued with API in Switzerland, but proved less of an inspiration in the English-speaking world. Also, Joyce’s energies were flagging after 12 years ‘in harness’. Student numbers were declining and the publisher Samuel Weiser had decided to cease publishing the Huber books in English, no doubt because of reducing sales. Some of these were set books for the Diploma Course. And there was no publisher interested in the latest Huber book on the Aspect Patterns.

Fortuitously, Barry had retired a couple of years earlier and was learning about Writing and Book Publishing. To hopefully address the decline in student numbers, we decided to write and publish an Introductory book, using the then-newly-emerging technology of print-on-demand, whereby there is no mass printing of books, as in traditional printing, but books are printed as needed by the trade.

We were fortunate to be helped in understanding this approach by friend Will Parfitt, who had self-published his own psychosynthesis books.

The Cosmic Egg Timer

Helped by Richard Llewellyn as co-author, and by school student and astrologer Annabel Burton, who provided illustrations and cover image, we developed the book The Cosmic Egg Timer: Introducing Astrological Psychology. The Cosmic Egg Timer was published via our publishing partner Lightning Source in 2004. Within 2 years, it had sold nearly 400 copies.

Aspect Pattern Astrology

Louise and Michael Huber held what turned out to be their last seminar in Britain, at Buckland Hall in Wales in 2003. There, we discussed with them the possibility of using a similar approach to publishing their then-latest book Aspect Pattern Astrology. The complication was that, for them, colour printing was essential for Aspect Pattern Astrology, and colour printing with print-on-demand was at that time prohibitively expensive. We proposed that we print in black-and-white and provide colour bookmarks, showing all the aspect patterns in colour, as an optional companion to the book. Louise and Michael accepted, we set up appropriate agreements, and it worked.

Fortunately, Richard Llewellyn was able to put us in touch with a translator, Heather Ross, who translated the book into English, edited by Barry. We shared the costs with Louise. Aspect Pattern Astrology was published as our second book in January 2005.

HopeWell Publisher was established and on its way, and these two books have remained in our bestsellers ever since then!

To be continued in Part 2.