It's not a bad idea. The women's fiction market is awash with pastel-hued chick-lit, and while that's fine for the Jones-wannabe PR bunnies that it caters to, there's far less on offer specifically for older women - save perhaps for meandering sagas and category romance. Or is there? When Nikki Read and husband Giles Lewis founded Transita, they did so to address this gap in the market. Yet they've found themselves splitting their audience into pro- and anti- camps. While many embrace the idea (not least as an outlet for new authors), others have questioned the necessity of age-targeted fiction, particularly for an age group already deemed to be voracious readers. Still, with fourteen books already published, Transita shows no sign of slowing down.

And it's not just about the readers. One of Nikki's main aims is to break new authors, again with a focus on the over-45's. As she puts it, "It makes sense to us that if you allow mature women to write about what they want to write about, they'll write what we want to read."

So whatever it's seen as peddling this week - hen-lit / matron-lit / frump-lit - Transita's here to stay as a focused outlet for new writing. And for prospective authors, that's got to be a good idea.

Great Writing: What was the inspiration behind Transita?

Nikki Read: Giles Lewis, my husband and business partner and I had always wanted to publish fiction, but thought that as a small independent publisher we needed an angle.  Then one evening early last year we were having a drink in a wine bar in Oxford on the way home from the office.

First a party of middle-aged women arrived for dinner, chatting, laughing and generally enjoying themselves.  We then noticed a couple, of a similar age, who were obviously in a new relationship.  This led to our discussing how very different mid-life is for the baby boom generation; how an entire generation of women was experiencing the tumultuous transition of mid-life in ways not seen before.

But where, we wondered, was the fiction that captured this collective anima of an entire generation; that mirrored the lives and experiences of women who were reinventing what it means to be middle aged?  There appeared to be a gap in the market.

GW: You're also a publisher of non-fiction self-help books. How does publishing women's fiction compare?

NR: The two complement each other very well.  Our aim with How To Books is to publish aspirational self-help books. We want to help people achieve their goals.  Inspiration and aspiration are important for Transita books too.  We want our heroines and the stories as a whole to inspire our readers and to help them to see mid-life, not as an inevitable decline but as a time for reinvention and new opportunities. Transita books are an affirmation of women in mid-life, and of their legitimate aspirations.

Authenticity is another key word for How To Books.  All our authors write from personal experience - they have to been there and done it before they can write for us.  So, for example the author of How To Start and Run Your Own Restaurant, has actually done that herself - she didn't just go out and research how to do it.  Authenticity is key for Transita too.  It allows writers to write about women of their own age, or issues that are important in their lives - rather than bending their prose to meet the demands of the chick lit publishing mentality. Many of the authors who have come to us had already written the books they wanted to write but the bigger publishers wouldn't publish them because they said the central characters were too old and there wasn't a market for that age group.

GW: The idea initially proved to be somewhat controversial, most notably the Radio 4 'Open Book' programme branding it "frump-lit". How do you react to this criticism?

NR: We were a bit surprised at how strongly some people took against the concept. It soon became apparent following the Open Book programme that people were divided into pro-Transita and anti-Transita!  Controversy is good though because it gets people talking. What surprised us particularly though was how angry some women felt about the concept. We couldn't really understand why people should be angry because a publisher was offering people more choice and providing a signpost to a new body of fiction.  A reviewer recently said in her review of a Transita book that she wouldn't 'be told what to read'.  Does she not realize that she has been told what to read for years by publishers who were choosing to ignore a large portion of the population in favour of chick lit type novels? And that a huge number of women were being denied the opportunity to get published because other publishers were saying that that there wasn't a market for the sort of novels that they wanted to write.  Of course people are quite free to choose whatever they want to read - but at least Transita has helped broaden that choice. And now other publishers are doing the same.

GW: Why do you think its important to focus on a specific age range?

NR: It was important to focus on a specific age range in order to redress the balance in terms of what was being published already i.e. fiction for the 35 years old and below. The fact is the many writers weren't being published purely on the basis that there characters were too old.

I think the pro and anti transita division partly revolves around women's attitude to age.  I'm sure there are some who just don't want to be reminded that they're getting older and perhaps they see Transita as yet another re-enforcer of that reality. So it could be that we are unwittingly trying to overcome a cultural hurdle - which is a big challenge! 

There's not much we can do about getting older - but the baby boom generation, which is what we're talking about really are lucky in that we're all staying younger longer and living interesting and fulfilling lives.  Transita's aim is to reflect that in the fiction we publish.

GW: What does Transita offer to prospective authors?

NR: For some Transita offers the opportunity to be published which they couldn't get elsewhere. Giles and I read every submission - which is why it can take a while for us to get back to people.  However we believe in what we are trying to achieve at Transita so we feel it's important that every publishing decision is a personal one.  It's the same for How To Books.

Our terms are pretty standard royalty wise.  Our advances are extremely low, because each publishing decision is quite a risk and the book shops are becoming more and more demanding, which makes life tough for small publishers in particular. 

GW: Typically, what kind of writing background should a Transita author have?

NR: Most of the Transita authors are first-time authors with a few also who have been published before.  Many of our authors simply 'have' to write, which is great because what they write is really authentic.  Most belong to writing groups.

GW: What is your usual submission process? Do you assign editors to work with authors on accepted manuscripts?

NR: We ask authors for a short synopsis and the first three chapters.  If we feel it is right for Transita we will then ask for the full script, which we send to an editor so that she can read it and write a full report.  If the novel is accepted for publication we will then ask that same editor to edit the final manuscript.  The author is in charge of that process though and we won't insist on any changes unless the author is totally happy with them.

GW: Your distinctive cover designs make a book quite recognisably 'Transita'. Is 'collectability' an important factor?

NR: We did want to keep the covers in a certain Transita style for quick identification - but we also wanted to treat each cover individually with the content in mind.  I hope we've managed to achieve those two conflicting goals with the current covers.  We had thought in terms of collectability at the beginning but the books are quite diverse so maybe not everyone will want to read every book.

GW: Would you expect readers to buy into the brand, or to follow a particular author?

NR: Both. We see Transita as a cradle in which to nurture authors who will hopefully make a name for themselves. Our books are all marketed individually and although initially the publisher brand and author have equal prominence, as the author becomes known in her (or his - we have one male author so far) own right she will have more prominence than the Transita brand - will in fact become a brand in her own right. 

GW: You're keen to stress that Transita books cover various genres, and aren't category romances. How are you marketing Transita to put across the diversity on offer?

NR: Marketing to put across the diversity is one of our biggest challenges. Where we can we take an issues approach.  For example Beryl Kingston's book is interesting in that it explores the issue of working mothers relying on their own mothers to look after the grandchildren, whilst they go back to work. The website of course pulls all the books together under one roof so that people are able to see the diversity of books on offer.

GW: How many books to do plan to publish in a year? What's the ratio of submissions to accepted manuscripts?

NR: We've published 15 since launching this April and will publish one or two per month next year. I think we're accepting about 1 in every 100-150.

GW: What should a submission do to keep you hooked?

NR: It should have a strong story line. You need to want to keep reading, especially when you have maybe a hundred others waiting for your attention! We also look for sympathetic characters and a good pace.  And of course the main character needs to be over 45.

GW: What's next for Transita?

NR: We hope to break at least 2 or 3 authors from our first year's publications.

For more information on Transita, visit their website.