And Other opportunities: Tobler reveals indie list will press on with US expansion

And Other Stories co-founder Stefan Tobler (pictured) is expanding operations in the US, galvanised by what he sees as “the right time to take the opportunity”.

The expansion has been in the pipeline for some time. The press, a not-for-profit outfit, published Deborah Levy’s Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Swimming Home in 2011; the acclaim ensured the novel was also its top-selling title in 2019. In 2013 it used the extra sales money generated from the title to invest in taking on a New York-based publicist, Sarah Russo. It was confirmed earlier this month that she will be joined by senior editor Jeremy Davies, formerly at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

“We invested the extra money, but we hadn’t really made good on establishing our presence there,” Tobler says. “Now Jeremy is joining us in editorial, we’ll be acquiring more in the US and growing the networks we have there.” Davies and Russo will also be joined by a publicity and trade marketing director, stepping into the newly created position.

The press is no stranger to a change of scenery. In 2017 Tobler relocated the main office to Sheffield, acting on “a wish to make publishing less London-focused”, and founded the Northern Book Prize. In addition to selling through bookshops, And Other Stories operates a subscription model whereby customer’s books are selected by writers and translators.

Tobler celebrates the advantages of being a nimble, smaller press with a personal touch, suggesting this assisted with across-the-pond expansion, and weathering lockdown. “I remember the days when we didn’t have an office and when we did everything from my living room, and so when lockdown came, it didn’t seem impossible to get a bunch of our books in from our warehouse, delivered over to my house, and for us to carry on doing our web sales direct, and just continue our own web sales during lockdown, and get everything moving,” he says.

The press is regularly supported by Arts Council England funding, “albeit at the lower end of their scale”, and Tobler is positive about its performance. It’s top sellers for 2019 alongside Levy’s novel included Rita Indiana’s Tentacle and Alia Trabucco Zerán’s The Remainder, selling 1,392 and 1,236 units respectively through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market.

Brave new world
But is it wise to be expanding now, with the threat of a second lockdown looming? “There has been and certainly will be some sleepless [nights] this year, as to what’s happening and what will happen,” he admits, “but it also feels a bit like the situation is a double or quit—there are opportunities because larger publishers are becoming more risk-averse and shying away from the literary publishing that we do, and that’s where the opportunity is to grow.”

Tobler credits this overly cautious attitude and dependency on commercial value in publishing houses for his continued window of opportunity. “We started out in the last recession. I think if the large companies hadn’t shown themselves to be averse to publishing some of the great books when they weren’t sure of the commercial potential, I would never had bothered to start And Other Stories,” Tobler says.

“The success of some of the independent sector’s authors, things such as Swimming Home for us and Eimear McBride at Galley Beggar, Eley Williams from Influx, and various others, has led to the larger houses becoming more willing to take those literary books and take a chance. But I think the tide is turning back now, and so it’s more necessary than ever to make sure that those books are being picked up.”

Some of the new titles the press has recently scooped will be published on both sides of the Atlantic. They include a reissue of 1960s modernist Ann Quin’s novel Three; Rachel Genn’s novel about “female resilience”, What You Could Have Won; and Slash and Burn by Salvadorian fiction author Claudia Hernández, translated by Julia Sanches. The former two titles will both be out this autumn, with Hernández’s text publishing in January. Last week the press acquired Keeping the House, interdisciplinary artist Tice Cin’s début novel, which will be edited by Max Porter, of Lanny and Grief is the Thing with Feathers fame.

And Other Stories also plans to donate 20% of the receipts of pre-ordered copies of its new feminist collection, This is How We Come Back Stronger, to domestic abuse charities. Launching in spring 2021 in collaboration with the Feminist Book Society and The Feminist Press, the book will feature short stories, non-fiction interviews and poetry from 40 writers, including Dorothy Koomson, Layla Saad, Yomi Adegoke and Lisa Taddeo.

Commenting on the new acquisitions, Tobler emphasises that despite how circumstances may look (the pandemic, an unprecedentedly crowded autumn, and titles struggling for Christmas media coverage) what keeps him going is the need to find and shine a light on overlooked talent. “Like everyone, we’re worried about the number of books vying for coverage and getting out there,” he said. “But it seems to me like a good time to expand, as the other [larger publishers] are inevitably going to move away from some of the more interesting books. And that’s where we come in.”