Patrick Gallagher. Photos: Anthony Johnson Right - Patrick Gallagher. Photos: Anthony Johnson

Every book publisher has a story about the author who got away. Picking the next bestseller has always been a punters' game, says Patrick Gallagher, chairman of Allen & Unwin. ''It's a fickle business, publishing. I've always said it's like backing horses: some races you win, some you lose.''

 To celebrate the centenary of the company that opened for business the day Britain declared war on Germany, Gallagher and his executive director, Paul Donovan, have gifted a bespoke hardback of the company's history to staff, authors and booksellers.

 In 1976 Gallagher arrived in the middle of a wilting Sydney summer to set up an Australian branch of Allen & Unwin, then the only British publisher without a local division. Were it not for the success of J.R.R. Tolkien, Gallagher doubts he would have ever come.
Allen & Unwin was then riding high on the sales of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, which had been dubbed in-house as ''sell a million''.

 ''Now then, young Gallagher,'' said the British managing director of the publisher, Jim Hodgson. ''Don't you go native.''
''I'm afraid I ignored him,'' says Gallagher, who stayed in Australia to publish David Marr's Barwick and a concise history of Southeast Asia by the academic Milton Osborne, now in its eleventh edition.

 On July 10, 1990, Gallagher, Donovan, Peter Eichhorn and Rhonda Black engineered a management buyout to make Allen & Unwin Australia's largest independent book publisher. That same day the British firm was bought out by HarperCollins and ceased to exist as a company or as an imprint in Britain.

 Allen & Unwin has gone on to win publisher of the year 12 times, twice as many as any rival, and publishes 250 new books annually.

 Gallagher says he gets tingles when he reads fiction he believes might be the next big book.
''As a publisher you want to feel the writer is not writing for themselves but for the reader. There are geniuses, of course, but they are the exception. The writer must always have the reader in mind.''