Coronavirus has stacked odds against indies further, BHP Comics publisher warns

Coronavirus has stacked the odds against indie presses even further, BHP Comics publisher Sha Nasir has said, warning he will have to completely change his firm's business model as a result of the pandemic.

Nasir revealed his firm will have to pause making printed graphic novels and try to focus on selling foreign rights to existing titles because Covid-19 has used up the publisher's reserves.

He made the admission during a discussion on the future of publishing as part of the Edinburgh International Book Fair. The live streamed event was chaired by Canongate's editor-at-large Ellah Wakatama Allfrey and featured Picador commissioning editor Kishani Widyaratna, Lighthouse Books owner Mairi Oliver and Fiona McMorrough of FMcM Associates.

Nasir said the lockdown had forced him to re-examine why he was running the business the way he was.

He said: “The system is really hard for a small publisher to survive. Everything's already stacked against you anyway.”

BHP had been exporting to the US and Canada since 2018, he said, but it created a lot more cost for the publishing house once distribution costs and discounts were taken into account. "We're not selling in the kind of quantities where you can get a good enough chunk of money back," he said.

Two books meant to come out this year had been pushed back to 2021 and those could be the last physical books the press produces for the time being.

He said: “Over the course of this past five months I've had to use all the reserves I've had to basically keep the business running. So the money I had set aside to make new books, that's gone now. So I know that the new books that we'll be making aren't going to be physically published books for the moment.”

Nasir said he was now looking at the company's assets and seriously considering selling the English language rights for the US and Canada to bigger publishing houses. A lot of the company's books would be put into a digital format and the company was hoping to sell TV and film rights, he added.

He said: “The reality of how we were making books before, I can't keep doing that anymore. We can't sustain it.”

In a wide-ranging discussion that covered the coronavirus crisis, distribution and the Black Lives Matter movement, the panel agreed that diversity in publishing had improved in recent years but there was more action needed rather than just more talk.

Oliver said it was time for more voices at the top table so it wasn't just the same old gatekeepers.

She said: “If we can't just invite everyone at the top to leave and make room for everyone else, then at least make the table longer in decision making settings. So when decisions are made to renovate the office, there's a disabled voice at the table. When we're saying 'this is our budget for publicity' that there are people of colour in the room saying 'why are we only saying that our black writers can have events in London?' At that stage at the top, where money and power are, the table should be long enough to include those voices everywhere in publishing, whether that's in distribution, bookshops, publishing, agents who are picking those lists. The ecosystem needs to decide who's at the table at that level.”

Widyaratna said bigger publishers could learn a lot from indies about making direct contact with readers, the importance of which had been demonstrated during the lockdown.

Asked for an idea to change the publishing industry, she said: “I would want publishers to get out of the office, to get out and meet readers, to go also into libraries to see what's happening there. To also have a better understanding of what's happening in the school system, in terms of the curriculum. To have a greater understanding of the many different ways in which people encounter our books.

“And then to also reimagine our relationship to those readers, so it's not just a commercial imperative but also one of responsibility. What do we owe those readers and this incredibly varied readership that's out there? Can we think beyond the commercial argument and into what feels politically and socially crucial? Can we ask what feels vital, essential and important and important to who?”