Myriad Editions makes redundancies

Independent publisher Myriad Editions is making two editors redundant and cutting back the number of titles it publishes after a “tough” couple of years.

Plummeting e-book sales, retailers demanding higher discounts, a lack of funding from Arts Council England and authors being snapped up by larger publishing houses have all been blamed for the downturn of the company.  

Vicky Blunden, senior editor at Myriad, and editor Holly Ainley are both leaving the company next month following a redundancy process, The Bookseller understands. The company, which employs fewer than 10 people in a mixture of employed staff and regular freelancers, will also be decreasing the number of titles a year it publishes from 12 to eight.

M.d and publisher of the Brighton-based press, Candida Lacey, said that while the company had consistently “punched above its weight”, a cocktail of pressures had “regrettably” forced it into making cutbacks.

Lacey said: “Things have been bad – tough – for a couple of years. The combination of retailers demanding heavy discounts, falling sales and higher returns has meant we have been really struggling to make ends meet. Sales have been dropping - e-book sales this year are less than half what they were last year. There has been a real drop-off in e-books this year.”

The company, which specialises in original literary fiction and graphic novels, along with infographic atlases, has also not benefitted from Arts Council England funding for the last four years, which Lacey said was “really tough for the sort of publishing we have been doing”.

“We were advised over two years ago to make some savings by losing staff and we have been looking at every other option rather than that, because in a small team it is the last thing that you want to do,” she said. “Regretfully there is no other alternative and we are making two editors redundant.”

Lacey added that the company's leading authors being poached by larger publishing houses had added to the pressure.

“More than 20% of our authors have been picked up by larger publishers,” Lacey said. “On one hand, that is a measure of our success in spotting new talent and a great fillip for the authors. On the other hand, it makes it much harder for us to recoup our investment in finding and developing new talent. We are always delighted for the author because a larger publisher can offer them more in terms of publicity support, as well as a larger advance, but it is difficult to sustain a business if this keeps happening."

Among the authors who have been snapped up by larger publishers include Isabel Ashdown who has moved to new Orion imprint Trapeze, Lisa Cutts who is now at Simon & Schuster, Lizzie Enfield who has gone to Penguin and Robert Dickinson who will now be published by Orion. Elizabeth Haynes, however, is set to return to Myriad after a gap publishing two books with Sphere, with a new psychological thriller out in October.

“Myriad has always punched above its weight, it feels like we have been playing with the big boys a bit,” she said. “What we have to do now is shrink back and focus on more bespoke lists of literary fiction and non-fiction.”

Myriad also has two authors shortlisted for the Authors Club Best First Novel Prize, The Last Pilot, the story of one man’s courage in the face of “unthinkable loss” by Benjamin Johncock and Belonging, an “epic of love, loss and homeland” by Umi Sinha.

Other big titles Myriad has coming up include Never Alone by Haynes, out in October, Hole in the Heart by Henny Beaumont, published in June, graphic novel For the Love of God, Marie! in July and Men Like Air by Tom Connolly, the second novel from the previously-shortlisted Desmond Elliott prize author, coming in September.