Indie publishers optimistic despite lockdown struggles

Many independent presses are reporting a mood of optimism after good 2020 sales. However 2021 is looking uncertain, with some forced to rethink long-term planning and publishing schedules because of the disruption caused by lockdowns and Brexit.

Veruschka Selbach, m.d. at Pluto Press, is among those reporting a strong 2020. She told The Bookseller: “Much to our relief, we had an excellent year in 2020. Final numbers aren't in yet, but it looks like we're going to be at least 20% up on last year. We were able to use our website to make up for the losses we experienced in the trade and internationally. Our website sales have tripled. This has put us in a great position going forward, with a very strong direct customer base which we will continue to grow."

She said: “The first lockdown had the biggest impact. We put about half our staff on furlough and changed our entire publication schedule. This time, we are using part-time furlough as needed and we're publishing a full schedule. We've been able to take what we learned from the first lockdown and refocus our strategy."

Aimée Felone, co-founder of children's publisher Knights Of, told The Bookseller that after the success of the Inclusive Indies fundraiser and receiving funds from Arts Council England, the press is in "a really good position". The press launched A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll at the beginning of the first lockdown, which was named Blackwell's Book of the Year and bolstered sales.

"Retail has supported us and we've had support of Waterstones in a way that has been phenomenal and overwhelming for us as an indie," Felone said. "Them getting behind A Kind of Spark, it was an October Book of the Month, really helped us. We had our biggest sales numbers for that title alone and also across most of our titles because of the political climate and also Inclusive Indies which saw people seeking to support not only independent businesses but working for diverse representation as well. So we were really well placed to supply the books and the things people were wanting."

Commenting on latest lockdown, she noted indie publishers were finding it difficult to compete online in terms of marketing their books owing to budgeting restrictions. "I think exposure and fighting our way through the noise is even trickier now because we're all existing in this digital space. We're all vying for the attention of parents, librarians, teachers, when they already have enough on their plates. Cutting through the noise now, especially as an independent is even trickier. People think the digital space is limitless but it's really not and its dependent on how much money you have for marketing and a lot if indies don't have the budgets that others do."

Michael Schmidt, m.d. of Carcanet, said his publisher had seen a run of “very strong months” since Louise Gluck won the Nobel Prize and its poets picked up a host of awards and shortlistings. The publisher didn't alter its publication schedule and found new ways of selling books through its online shop, a channel which has become its third largest account. It also received ACE funding.

"We availed ourselves of the various things available like the bounceback loans," Schmidt said. "Gradually we had a series of things of our own making like our online launches which proved to be very successful and partly the good luck of winning a lot of prizes. Because of the very good luck we've had our sales are up, certainly a lot better than we were at in the last financial year. We've managed to keep everyone working remotely and relatively happily to an extent that I suspect a lot of our patterns will change when Covid is over."

He added: "I think the online event is here to stay and it's a wonderful way of getting people from eight, 10 or 12 countries to come to launches. We actually like them very much: we get audiences from 60 to 150 which is wonderful.”

Andrew Johnston, m.d. of Quiller, said his firm's specialism of countryside living non-fiction such as fishing, shooting and horse-riding books had proved popular since the first lockdown, with a strong backlist and one dog training book, Total Recall, by Pippa Mattinson 100% up on where it was last year.

He said: “Quite frankly it's been remarkably good, people have really seemed to get their mind around perhaps training their dogs or doing things they perhaps wouldn't have done if they were commuting up to town everyday. The second half of the year was up on the second half of the previous year. Overall we were marginally down because we didn't have Bertrams which was our second or third largest account, but in the last three or four months we were up by about 15%. For us the backlist is king really and we put off a lot of titles from last year, put them back to this year thinking of course it would all be over by now. So we didn't publish a lot of new books last year but we've been reprinting and reprinting the backlist titles and for us that's been absolutely fantastic.”

He added: “It's changed the profile of our customers. We have new online customers who we weren't dealing with before who are our third or fourth largest customers overall now from nothing last year. They've shot up. But of course Waterstones is tough and Gardners is probably a bit tougher for us as they supply the book trade and of course the book trade isn't there.”

However, others have acknowledged a significant downturn in sales in 2020, relying on a supportive customer base and direct selling to make it through.

Laura Jones, publisher at 404 Ink, said: "Our sales predictably plummeted in 2020, with no frontlist to drive sales — we certainly could not compete with the big names and brands from the Big Five. Eventually, direct sales via our own already-established website and Amazon became our saving grace and bookshop sales slowed to virtually nothing. Returns from Bertrams' collapse also hit us hard with no sight of that lost income. Selling books directly via our own website has been part of 404 Ink since we launched in late 2016 and well over 5,000 orders later, we're thankful for a loyal base of customers who regularly support us by buying directly, even when we have no new titles to sell."

Scott Pack, editor at large at Eye & Lightning Books, said the closure of independent shops had caused alarm at the press and was forcing management to reconsider the way it operates. "When the first lockdown hit we were very worried as we rely on bookshops, the indies especially, for a reasonable percentage of our sales. And, to start with, things did look pretty dire, with only Amazon really trading with any sense of normality - and we are never keen to send readers direct to them at the expense of bookshops that actually pay their taxes - so we set up a discount offer at our website and took to social media, like many other publishers, to tout our wares. And our central team, all four of them, took delivery of piles of our books in case the warehouse was forced to close and we had to send orders out by hand. We took the risky decision to keep our publishing schedule as planned, and hope that we could sell our new titles during a pandemic."

He added: "We think we have found a way to operate, just about, without the traditional retail base, and are certainly looking to how we can make the business viable with no bookshops sales at all. That's not to say we don't want them - we'd love them - but we cannot guarantee them from one month to the next, so we need to be clever in how we publish and sell our books."

Tom Chalmers, m.d.. of Legend Times, said 2020 had been "a rollercoaster of a year" as the press' physical retail outlets and export sales were hit the hardest. It sales reduced nearly entirely in April, recovering a little over the summer before decreasing again with the new pandemic restrictions, meaning over the year they were down 53% on the previous year. He added however, that this has been balanced with online sales up 97% and e-book sales up 75%, plus growth in the academic journals business.

Chalmers said the publishing house had faced "huge challenges" pivoting its focus to areas where it would remain active. "On the optimistic side, if as hoped we see some return of physical retail outlets by spring/summer, we hope the advancements we’ve made in online and other parts of our business will put into a stronger position once the recovery has started," he said.

At Sweet Cherry Press, publisher Lara Clift said: “While 2020 was a good year for Sweet Cherry I have concerns moving into 2021 due to the long lead times in publishing. A lot of the 2020 income was hangover deals done in 2019. With the absence of fairs [over] the past year it has been more difficult to secure new business and secure new deals."

Despite reporting a "good December", Sam Jordison, co-founder of Galley Beggar, said forward planning was proving difficult with the uncertainty surrounding when lockdown restrictions would lift.

“Normally we'd be looking forward to a bumper year," he said. "We've got some really important titles from our established authors and some really powerful debuts. But with everything being so unpredictable, it's hard to say where we are. We're finding it very hard to do normal logistics, for instance, like working out how many books to print. And we keep having to revise down our numbers, even though being too cautious also brings trouble.

“We're only at the start of this lockdown, but it's pretty clear it's going to be tougher. And the longer it goes on, the worse it will be."

Kevin Duffy, publisher and co-founder of Bluemoose Books, said the press had had a very good last six months of 2020, up 20% on 2019, led by the success of Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession. However, he said the uncertainty around Covid restrictions lifting was “the biggest concern” for Bluemoose Books.

"We don't know when bookshops will be fully open and if or when, there will be future lockdowns or tiered closures," he said. "The big five are doing remarkably well because they have the physical and IT resources and books to capture the digital airwaves and stack their titles high in supermarkets, the only consistent store that is selling books. As we saw last year though readers are combing the internet for new books and stories from Indy presses but with collaboration and cooperation we are still managing to capture the readers interests and sell to them directly from our website, hopefully satisfying their demand for wonderful stories to read during these difficult times.”

Martin Hickman, m.d. of Canbury Press said: "Lockdown and the closure of high street shops, although necessary, has damaged our business and we've had to reassess our 2021 pipeline, with editorial, sales and marketing plans all being affected. We've enjoyed the support of a number of excellent small indie bookshops in the past, so having them shut has hit sales — and the uncertainty and additional red tape caused by Brexit could not have come at a worse time. "

"Despite all of this, we received a grant from Arts Council England's culture recovery fund, which eased cashflow. We're also making modest use of the government's furlough scheme which we've found to be flexible and fair. We've had to delay publication dates for our 2021 titles to ensure every title has a good chance of achieving its potential, but this has meant that we've been able to add updates. We're focusing as much as we can on online opportunities — more than 800 people recently attended a Zoom call with author Ian Dunt. These events and the success of Bookshop.org has shown that although this isn't the New Year that we had hoped for, the demand for high quality books is very much still alive, and we'll focus on online discovery until the industry can celebrate in-person book buying once again. So things are difficult and will remain so for a while, but, as ever, we are focused on the upside."

Nii Ayikwei Parkes, founder of Flipped Eye, said the press was focused on strategising for the long term. "Ultimately, we moved our focus from book sales and instead have invested time in planning for the future — increasing the time we spend reading submissions, scouring available foreign rights and actively plotting new initiatives in fiction and non-fiction to more expansively extend our offering beyond the poetry we have traditionally been known for."