New blog!
September 23, 2010 by johnpaulholden · Leave a Comment
I’ve started a new blog, The Bibliophile, which you can access here. Happy reading!…
Publishing on the edge of the world
October 7, 2009 by johnpaulholden · Leave a Comment
We all know something about the pernicious effect of corporate power on freedom and diversity of expression in news media.
Well, spare a thought for the brave individuals striking out by themselves in UK book publishing. It’s a David and Goliath world out there - without the miraculous sling! Yet some are taking the plunge and doing everything they can to publish serious work and remain solvent enough to feed, clothe and house themselves. The struggle, though, looks set to become even harder. Many smaller, experimental and alternative-minded publishers – no matter how determined and innovative – will go to the wall or be forced to scale back their ambitions.
Some facts to put the situation in perspective: there are around 8000 book publishing enterprises in the UK, yet four
UK book publishing has in recent years enjoyed healthy growth rates which have put it ahead of counterparts in the rest of Europe. Earnings have increased from roughly £2.5bn in 2001 to almost £3bn last year (complete stats here). The 2009 recession, however, has sunk its teeth in. Current sales are down around 11% on 2008 and deteriorating conditions have forced some of the industry’s most powerful names to make tough choices: Penguin announced 100 redundancies earlier this year and – shock, horror! – the Richard and Judy Book Club made its last ever recommendations (actually more serious than it sounds - R & J did loads to raise the profile of reading and they didn’t just promote guff). See Cahal Milmo’s feature in The Independent for the full picture.
For Scottish independent Two Ravens Press, market concentration and declining demand have conspired to make life pretty much intolerable. This is sad and serious. Forget Canongate - TRP is far more deserving of the epithet ’on the edge’. Run from a lochside croft in the north-west Highlands by Sharon Blackie and David Knowles, it has garnered praise as one of the most radical outfits in Scottish and UK publishing. Its aims are simple: to provide a home “for writers of original, innovative and challenging work” who are having difficulties ”in the increasingly conformist world of British publishing”. Its authors include Alasdair Gray (who has a new collection of poetry out next year), Suhayl Saadi and Kevin Williamson (founder of Rebel Inc and the man who can claim most credit, after Irvine Welsh, for giving the world Trainspotting).
I’m hoping to talk to Sharon and/or David at some point in the near future about what it takes to survive as a small, remote publisher of material with little or no mass market appeal. How do they do it? Read more
