Sally Milner registered the name of Greenhouse Publications in February 1975 and financed the establishment of the press with the proceeds of the sale of her home. At the outset, Milner worked for other publishers as a book packager to generate more working capital.
Greenhouse's inaugural titles reflected Milner's interests in childcare and education; subsequent titles reflected her interests in the social and political issues of the 1970s and 1980s, especially those related to the end of the Vietnam war and the growth of the Australian Women's Liberation Movement.Other titles in the list included resource books for schools including the Helping to Save Our Earth series, as well as cookbooks, practical books for adults, fiction, and history and heritage titles. Greenhouse also published children's books from the outset, and in the 1980s the list expanded to include Young Adult titles.
Greenhouse was the first Australian publishing company to develop and publish books that considered Australian women as artists, photographers and independent filmmakers, for example, Australian Women Artists (1980), Joy Hester (1983), Australian Women Photographers (1986) and Don't Shoot Darling: Women's Independent Filmmaking in Australia (1987).
Several Greenhouse titles were instant bestsellers, such as Mastering Rubik's Cube (1980), which came to the company as an unsolicited manuscript and was published at 'the height of the craze' for this puzzle game, and Julie Stafford's Taste for Life for Children (1987), which was Greenhouse's first cookbook. Mastering Rubik's Cube also sold well overseas; other overseas successes for Greenhouse included Cube Games, Fun with Wool and the Helping to Save Our Earth series.
In mid-1987, Greenhouse was acquired by Kerry Packer's Australian Consolidated Press, and Milner stayed on as an associate publisher to develop the Greenhouse list and build a related Australian Consolidated Press list.
In 1988, Penguin Books Australia acquired the Greenhouse list. After being an independent publisher for so long, Milner had found it difficult to adapt to the requirements of a large corporation, and parted company with Australian Consolidated Press in 1989.
Milner then established Sally Milner Publishing and regained her status as an independent publisher. From mid-1987 until 1989 Greenhouse was an imprint of Australian Consolidated Press then of Penguin Books Australia.
Major sources:
Diane Brown, 'Publishing Culture: Commissioning Books in Australia 1970-2000', unpublished thesis, Victoria University, 2003, pp. 42-43.
Michael Denholm, Small Press Publishing in Australia: the late 1970s to the mid to late 1980s, Footscray, Vic., Footprint, 1991.
Albert Moran, interview with Sally Milner, 1988, in Albert Moran Collection of Publishing Interviews, Australian Defence Force Academy Library, Canberra.
