Life of Pi is award winning Canadian author Yann Martel's third novel and a tremendous coup for Canongate. It is the first time that a book published in Scotland has won the Man Award, a prestigious literary prize around which there is always a blaze of publicity and often much heated debate.

Since 1994, when the company became independent following a management buyout, Canongate Books has emerged as one of the most dynamic publishing houses in the UK. Its agenda is to publish challenging, quality work from as broad a perspective as possible. The inclusion of Martel – and others – on their list is evidence that this perspective is truly international.

Another foreigner prospering under the Canongate imprint is Michel Faber. Born in Holland and raised in Australia, Faber now lives in the Scottish Highlands. His remarkable new novel The Crimson Petal and the White has reached pole positions on the US and the UK book charts and the film option has just been snapped up by Columbia Pictures for a six figure sum.

Canongate might be the flavour of the month but it is by no means a lone star in the Scots publishing firmament. Polygon, originally an imprint of Edinburgh University Press and now an imprint of Birlinn, was started by students in the 1960s. It has built up a distinctive list encompassing new fiction and poetry in both English and Gaelic. Every year it publishes the winners from Scotland's premier writing competition – The Scotland on Sunday/Macallan Short Story Competition – and the current champion of an impressive stable is Sandy McCall Smith whose No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series has received world-wide acclaim and spectacular sales success.

Exciting publishing ventures are in full swing on other fronts too – often with grant-aid assistance from Scottish Arts Council, from work in the Scots language to Scottish history. Innovation comes in many guises and in the case of House of Lochar location is part of the equation. Based on the western island of Colonsay this must be one of the most remote publishing houses in the world. But such is the power of the internet that remoteness is no longer a barrier to purchasing – especially true in the case of books, which have fared well in this new medium.

In terms of overall value, the publishing industry in Scotland is worth about £180m per annum. This includes DC Thomson who publish over 200 million magazines and newspapers every year including the Scots Magazine, Stitches and the legendary Beano comic.

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