Northern publishers buoyed by recent growth as conglomerates join the party

Despite the drastic effects of Covid-19 on publishers and literary organisations, the North of England’s book trade is adapting to the challenge and is as ambitious as ever about the future.

“It’s an exciting time to be a publisher in the North,” says Stefan Tobler (pictured), publisher at Sheffield-based And Other Stories. “There’s a lot going on and it feels like the momentum is still building.” According to Liverpool-based Dead Ink Books’ publishing director Nathan Connolly, publishing in the North is “thriving, despite facing considerable disadvantages [such as] operating with some of the smallest budgets and smallest teams, and yet we are able to compete at the national and international level.

Michael Schmidt, publisher of Manchester’s Carcanet Press, feels the North of England has “a lot to offer in terms of ecological planning and growth”, but says there can be pressure for publishers to be “local-centric”. Sara Hunt, owner of Saraband in Salford, thinks Northern publishing is becoming “more dynamic”, pointing to large publishers open- ing new offices in the region as proof. Ivan Wadeson, executive director of Manchester City of Literature, hopes that the conglomerates’ moves North will “diversify both the publishing workforce and the writers who are published”. Claire Malcolm, founding chief executive of New Writing North, warns that there must be co-operation to ensure that “the potential of this big push north by the industry is felt right across the region”.

Positives of the Northern publishing scene include lower overheads enabling presses to take more risks, a direct relationship with readers, and travel connections that make it relatively cheap and accessible to tour the region. Livi Michael, senior lecturer and Publishing MA programme leader at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Writing School, says a strength of Northern publishing is its “diversity” thanks to the work of publishers such as Comma Press and Carcanet around literature in translation, and Leeds-based indie Peepal Tree Press, which focuses on Caribbean and black British writing. Sophie O’Neill, m.d. of Newcastle’s Inpress and the Poetry Book Society, deems Northern publishers “a completely essential part of the writing and publishing ecosystem” for their role in discovering and nurturing new talent.

On the horizon
Challenges facing Northern publishers include “the big books and publishers squeezing us with margins in bookstores and in review coverage”, says Kevin Duffy, co-founder of Hebden Bridge’s Bluemoose Books. Chris Hart, head of marketing at Manchester University Publishing, also raises concerns about lack of infrastructure supporting publishing in the North, referring to “the paucity of bookshops (particularly indies) and event space, agents, and newspapers or magazines who can review the books”.

While Anna Goddard, owner of Carnegie Publishing in Lancaster, suggests that Northern publishers may be “less financially exposed than many of their Southern counterparts” at the moment, given their lower operating costs, others are less positive on this front. Sarah Cleave, publishing manager at Manchester indie Comma Press, calls it “a really worrying time for independents across the board”.

Though Carnegie has become busier since lockdown, others have struggled. For Comma, trade sales disappeared “almost overnight” and courses and events had to be cancelled or postponed. Changes to the funding landscape mean the future of some long-term projects— including the Northern Fiction Alliance—is uncertain, but there has been a “huge swell of support” from customers.

Lockdown has proved “very difficult” for Dead Ink, which decided early on to delay its new releases, with disastrous financial consequences. The indie was only saved from closure by Arts Council England’s Emergency Grant scheme. Lockdown saw Saraband’s April sales fall drastically year on year as many of the publisher’s spring non-fiction titles appeal to tourists at popular day-trip retail spots, and its spring fiction sales rely on events for exposure.

In academic publishing, Liverpool University Press m.d. Anthony Cond notes the short-term impact of lockdown for LUP was an “overwhelming switch to digital”, and he expects digital revenues to take a significantly larger share of sales going forward. MUP’s recently launched trade programme has helped it weather lockdown, says Hart, who adds that online sales have grown in this period, particularly through its website, with the press undergoing a “rapid transformation”, from selling predominantly to libraries to now largely selling direct to customers.

While the prospect of lockdown was initially “terrifying” for Bluemoose, the speedy publication of a new short story by Benjamin Myers drove an “enormous amount” of online traffic to the publisher’s website, with Duffy saying readers buying direct “basically saved us”. New Writing North has continued delivery of key work throughout, as well as commissioning new projects and refocusing its work in cities hit hard economically by the pandemic.

Distancing moves
Several Northern publishers and organisations introduced new initiatives to cope with the impact of lockdown. Saraband relaunched its website, created online events, started a podcast and put extra resources into social media. And Other Stories is investing in more digital advertising and online events, as well as introducing a scheme to donate 20% of its subscription sales to bookshops to help them through the pandemic.

Lockdown gave Carcanet an opportunity to reorganise and strengthen its company structure—and rather than altering its publishing schedule, it found alternative ways of selling and radically redeveloped its online shop. Bluemoose launched The Bluemoose Deli, an online literary chat, and it has introduced exclusive limited-edition hardbacks. Inpress has set up a direct-to-consumer initiative for independent bookshops, which was “very successful” while distributor Gardners was closed, and has continued to grow since its reopening. It has also looked at alternative routes to market and focused on sales of e-books and audiobooks.

Despite the challenges posed by lockdown, there is still plenty for the Northern book trade to look forward to. The Northern Publishers’ Fair, set up last year by Isabelle Kenyon, who runs Manchester micropublisher Fly on the Wall Press, is planned to take place in November at Manchester Central Library. A digital edition of Bradford Literature Festival begins today (26th June),while the organisers of Liverpool literary festival Wowfest have just launched a new virtual writing centre, called The Writer’s Bloc. The team at New Writing North is currently planning a fully realised digital programme for Durham Book Festival.

Sinead Morrissey, director of Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts, believes the lack of book sales through face-to-face events will have a lasting effect on the industry, but says there are opportunities in digital activity too. She adds: “You can reach wider audiences at no extra cost, nationally and internationally, while simultaneously reducing one’s carbon’s footprint.”

The road ahead
Looking ahead, Duffy believes bigger publishers will consolidate though acquisition and increase their market share with big books. Schmidt foresees “an autumn of extreme over-production, with effects on media, the trade and readership”, and voiced concern for the survival of booksellers. Post-pandemic, Carcanet Press will develop its new Anglophone writers’ list, its classics lists, and new collections for its backlist writers, as well as its export markets.

Children’s specialist UCLan Publishing will expand its publishing into early years in 2021. It will also nurture the writing and illustration talent of its students and expand its on-campus audiobook packaging service. LUP’s Cond says that while the pandemic has increased the appetite for Open Access, it has inevitably impacted the funding that could support it, and he warns that education publishers can expect a “challenging few years” to come. New Writing North is currently considering sites for its new Centre for Writing and Publishing in Newcastle, and is beginning to shape the business model for this, as well as looking at ways to develop its own publishing imprint.

Saraband plans to continue its community-building work with libraries and bookshops, and to strengthen its local publishing strands. Carnegie is currently recruiting but Goddard is proceeding with caution due to possible ramifications from Covid-19 which have not manifested yet, as well as the fallout from Brexit.

Connolly says the pandemic has “made clear the structural inequalities of this industry, and it has revealed a lot of the sector’s weaknesses”. He adds: “The response shouldn’t be to now look at how quickly we can get back to normal. Normal didn’t work for a lot of people. We should now, all of us, reinvent publishing. The North should be leading that charge.”