Regional offices shouldn't be satellites

I can hear the collective groan from London as this article pops into inboxes.

Christ, they’re thinking, not another bloody Northerner going on about diversity.

If you want us to stop talking about the lack of regional and class diversity in the UK books industry, then do something about it. It’s a fact that a bias exists in the UK books industry against Northern writers, people and stories. There’s enough evidence of that for me to have done an entire PhD on it. Yet, if Northerners didn’t constantly challenge the London-centric publishing industry to branch out, to embrace regional and class diversity, then we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Where we are today is in a country where class and regional discrimination exist in many industries, including the arts. And while the books industry is working to address this lack of diversity, it’s simply not enough. In recent years, some of the Big Five have stretched their limbs into the "desolate" North, but their heads and hearts remain in the capital. If we want real diversity, then we need strong, vibrant publishing divisions independent of London.

For regional offices to be really effective, they need to fully immerse themselves in the communities around them

Kevin Duffy of Bluemoose Books explained how a few years ago, "One of the Big Five gave the Northern Fiction Alliance a five-figure sum to do some R&D on whether they could move up here. They didn’t want to do it. They were playing it – one of them told me, we’ll never move to the North because all the agents are in London."

That attitude has changed, but not much and from only some of the Big Five. Both Hachette and HarperCollins have made successful moves into the regions. "The editorial, marketing and publicity team is based in the North and four out of six of us are Northern," HarperNorth fiction commissioning editor Daisy Watt said. "Our editorial remit is focused on finding talent from the Northern parts of the UK. We were set up to challenge the underrepresentation of people without London connections getting published, but the North is most underrepresented."

For regional offices to be really effective, they need to fully immerse themselves in the communities around them. "They need to be a local publisher rather than a London-based publisher with an office in the North," one editor said. "Not just offices, but publishing houses. They need a whole publishing outfit rather than a satellite office where everything goes back into the big cog."

Senior policy and liaison manager (Scotland) at the Society of Authors Heather Parry, agreed, "Regional offices should be given equal resources to London. They need to come with a mission that they engage with local authors and create literary hubs within these communities where people and publishing professionals can connect."

Peggy Hughes, executive director of the National Centre for Writing, has the solution a nutshell; "If you have people from different backgrounds in senior roles, they reflect that in the culture and in the choices they make". It really is that simple. If you want more diversity of voices in published works, diversify your workforce. It’s not hard, especially with the Northern Fiction Alliance and New Writing North ready to assist.

New Writing North Talent development manager, Will Mackie, leads the new Hachette-sponsored Publishing MA at Northumbria University. "It was set up to begin to address that imbalance of staffing within the industry, which is very centred on the South-East and London, and impact recruitment," he said. "Hachette and Northumbria University have invested in this course and the North East of England. There’s a definite need for a regional presence but it has to reflect that region, not just be a satellite doing similar work. It’s a really positive step by the industry acknowledging that their staff come from similar backgrounds, which obviously impacts what is published".

Still, the call for change falls squarely on the shoulders of those who hail from the North, other regions, or working-class backgrounds. Agent Juliet Pickering warns of placing the burden on those who "find they have to carry the load of, ’if you’re not in there to make the change, what are you doing?’"

That lack of diversity is not an issue we’ve created, and it’s not our responsibility to remedy it. Yet many in the industry, like me, shoulder that burden. And we are tired of fighting this same fight, of asking the same questions and getting the same answers. I hope my research will spark ideas and create connections, and that London recognises there are publishers, readers and writers in the North who are deserving of their time, respect and consideration. That Northern doesn’t mean working class and vice versa. That Northern stories don’t always have to be grim and gritty to be valid and publishable.

Rather than further exacerbate this divide and leave it to regional and working-class industry professionals and writers to constantly challenge the status quo, it’s time for those in the capital set aside their assumptions and start making changes to bring about a new era of publishing in the UK.