The Glue Factory October newsletter
This free monthly newsletter is to let you know about forthcoming events and/or publications involving
writers and creative practitioners I admire, most of whom have taken part in our online gatherings
over the last few years and who will therefore be familiar to many of you. Please support them!
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First up
A simple but important way to support Palestinian writers is to read their work. So explore
@arablit.bsky.social as well as publishers like @commapress.bsky.social. Thanks to Rónán Hession
for this suggestion.
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Barbellion Prize: important news!
The new Barbellion Prize website is now up and running. We’ll celebrate
the full official relaunch with an online gathering (just like the old days) on
Saturday 1st November at 7pm UK time featuring prize founder Jake
Goldsmith (of course) and a cohort of dazzling talents. More on this below.
Jake is one of the brightest people I’ve
ever met, and the most charming. All
three of his fine essay collections are
available to order from the publisher
here.
More website features, including film clips, will be added over the coming months. But the next
watershed moment will be (as I say) on Saturday 1st November, when the submissions window for
the 2026 prize will open. That window closes on 31st October 2026 (yes, Hallowe’en) so there’s
plenty of time for authors and publishers to submit work for consideration. There’s no charge to submit
(unlike many literary prizes) and full submission details will be available on the site from 1st
November.
Looking ahead, we need to cover the following costs:
* the prize pot (all four shortlisted bookstall be awarded £500 each. The overall winner will receive an
additional £500 and a unique trophy.). So the pot will cost £2,500 per year (but will, we hope, go up)
* the employment of an admin assistant (a couple of hours per month),
* a PR expert to promote the relaunched prize next year (a one-off expense),
* a modest honorarium for the three judges (we estimate £100 each). Our 2026 judges will be appointed soon,
* any operational overheads (which will be minimal, but include website and bank charges).
This, we hope, is where you come in.
To secure the future of the prize for the next three years and to allow for expansion, we aim to raise
£20,000 by the end of this year. That’s ambitious but certainly achievable, and thanks to generous
early donations and the transfer of existing funds to the new community bank account, we expect to
reach the target and even (possibly) exceed it.
But we need your help. Obviously.
I’ll notify all newsletter subscribers when the donation page goes live. Please donate what you can,
and as much as you can - no amount is too little or too large! Whether a one-off payment (gratefully
acknowledged) or a regular repeat payment by standing order (monthly or quarterly). 100% of
donations will go to the running of the prize.
Things are currently run by a Transition Committee with Jake (as chair), author and artist Riva Lehrer,
Professor Tom Shakespeare, publisher Jacob Smullyan and myself (as Secretary). I’ll step down once
the Prize is up and running and we’ll appoint a board of Trustees to oversee the prize in the years
ahead.
So, to repeat - the online launch event will be on Saturday 1st November. Starting at 7pm London
time and running for an hour. Do join us!
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Now. Any other business?
The 2025 Goldsmith Prize will be announced on Thursday 2nd October at 9pm UK time. The four
judges this year are Simon Okotie, Amy Sackville (Chair), Mark Haddon and Megan Nolan.
Congratulations to all, and not least to the winner.
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Small Publishers Fair 2026
The full list of participants in Small Publishers Fair 2025 is now online.
The Fair, an annual highlight of the literary calendar, takes place on Friday 24th and Saturday 25th
October and is open daily from 11am to 7pm. It’s a coming together and an affirmation of a vibrant
creative community.
At the Fair you'll find poetry pamphlets, letterpress, artists’ books, new writing and zines - all for sale,
many of them new, or only just out. Thirteen indie publishers will be taking part for the first time.
Seventeen others will return after a year or more away.
This year's exhibition features the work of Erica Van Horn. Fair regulars will know Erica from the
Coracle Press table. She is a friend and a supporter to the Fair and many in its community.
The Fair, exhibition and readings programme are free to attend. It all takes place in Conway Hall (Red
Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL), London’s centre for humanism and literary Bloomsbury.
Do come along. You’ll need to bring money (not all sellers have card machines) and a tote bag.
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Forthcoming
William Golding: The Faber Letters reveals the remarkable
literary collaboration between a Nobel Prizewinning novelist
and his editor of more than forty years.
Edited by Tim Kendall, out in November 2025 and available to
pre-order now. Click here.
Has any novelist ever equalled, or come close to, Golding’s
ten-year run of consecutive masterpieces? Lord of the
Flies (1954), The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), Free
Fall (1959) and The Spire (1964). Many others would follow…
(Hums ‘Santa Baby’ to himself.)
PS there are, astonishingly, two unpublished novels by Golding:
Circle Under the Sea and Short Measure. Perhaps they’re both
not good enough, but I wish some publisher would take a punt.
Faber being the obvious choice…
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The Little Review
The second issue of this very impressive little magazine will appear in late October. Within the pages
of the Autumn-Winter 2025 number you will find:
• Shane McCrae on John Berryman’s unpublished Dream Songs
• A chat with JH Prynne’s hairdresser
• The occult condoms of Ithell Colquhoun
• A childhood in Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta
• Sylvia Plath vs The Mummy
• Where’s Wystan: looking for the real Auden
• Luke Kennard confesses his sins
• New writing by Patricia Lockwood, Colm Tóibín, Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Lucy Ellmann, Rishi
Dastidar, Fran Lock, Camilla Grudova, Ian Duhig & more
Issue No 2 also includes previously unpublished Dream Songs by John Berryman.
Intrigued? You can pre-order your copy for a mere £5 by clicking on this shiny button.
This Shiny Button
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Current and forthcoming indie fiction
The Building Inspector by Miriam Frey (Nightjar Press)
The Building Inspector is a brief series of short stories, a debut mini-
collection by Swiss translator and writer Myriam Frey.
A bad-tempered building inspector antagonises harassed tenants in a
recognisable world of rented accommodation intruded upon by elements
of the weird and uncanny.
The Building Inspector will be launched at the Saul Hay Gallery,
Manchester, on Friday 17 October 2025, from 7.30–9pm. There will be
short readings and Myriam will be in conversation with publisher
Nicholas Royle.
Free to attend but you need to book here.
A Mystery of Remnant and Other Absences by B. Catling
“The death itself was not a bodily thing.”
A ghost is an absence defined by its presence, or else a presence
defined by its absence. The work of Brian Catling is filled with such
visions, intrusions on the threshold of our world and the next. The stories
collected within are fragments of a singular imagination, portals into
worlds populated by dog-headed giants and reanimated bog bodies,
spirits both beastly and mundane. These are tales about visionaries and
mystics, about the need to venture into blurry territories of sight in which
angels, ghosts and memories merge and reform. Together they showcase
the distinctive voice underlying the very best of Catling’s work.This hardback edition is limited to 500 copies. Includes three postcards with photos by Iain Sinclair
and texts by Alan Moore. Order here.
Loren Ipsum by Andrew Gallix
Writers are being murdered. Heads are rolling; victims tarred and feathered.
The French literary world lives in fear of the next attack. A nihilistic terrorist
group takes responsibility, but their objective remains obscure.
The very entertaining Loren Ipsum by Andrew Gallix was published in
September and there’s a terrific review by Oscar Mardell here
You can order direct from the publishers Dodo Ink here.
Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Doyle
The third and final volume in the noted boulevardier
Nicholas Royle's city-based story collections, is
published on 6th November. The previous two
collections (both warmly recommended) are London
Gothic and Manchester Uncanny. Pre-order for £9.50
+ p&p here.
Each order will be sent with three photographs taken
by the author in the course of his researches.
Blackout by Yann Chateigné Tytelman
with a preface by Suzanne Joinson, translated from the French by Clem Clement. Published on
Thursday 2nd October. Pre-order on the Les Fugitives website for £12.99 (RRP £14.99)
‘We carry our own silence and that of others like organs. We make our own silences and
harvest them. In Tytelman's haunted and haunting text, even ghosts are breathing.’
– Gareth Evans
There are Blackout launch events throughout the month and in early November:
Thursday 2nd October, Veranda Books
Blackout book launch, 6:30-8:30pm
7 Seymour Place, London, W1H 5BA
Yann Chateigné Tytelman in conversation with his translator, Clem Clement. Drinks will be available.
Tickets are free but booking is essential. More information on the Veranda Books website.Saturday 18th October, rile* books
Yann Chateigné Tytelman/Anne-Claire Schmitz, 7:00pm
Rue des Commerçants 62, 1000 Brussels
Tuesday 21st October, Chener Books
Michèle Roberts in conversation, 7:00-8:00pm
14 Lordship Ln, London, SE22 8HN
Michèle Roberts will be discussing French Cooking for One, with Chener Books, as part of this year’s
South-East London BookFest 2025. More information on our events page.
Tuesday 18th November, Reference.Point
Yann Chateigné Tytelman in conversation with Gareth Evans
2 Arundel St, Temple, London WC2R 3DA
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Books a Manifesto or, How to Build a Library by Ian Patterson
This is a book about books, about the subversive power of
reading and the strange, enduring magic of books as objects.
Ever since childhood, books have been at the centre of Ian
Patterson’s life, as a poet, teacher, translator, bookseller and
collector. As he constructs the last of many libraries, he makes
an impassioned case for the radical importance of reading in our
lives – from Proust to Jilly Cooper, from golden-age detective
novels to avant-garde poetry.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed this book.
Ian Patterson (poet, teacher, translator,
bookseller, collector and the current editor of
Nemo’s Almanack) describes the construction of
his library in the derelict coach house in the
garden of his home, and the gradual
organisation of thousands of books stored for
years in hundreds of boxes. It’s a beautiful,
generous and heartfelt celebration of
bookishness, and the pleasures of reading.
Order from the publishers here.
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Edna O’Brien (1930-2024): two tributes
‘Wordsmith – Part 1 is a broadcast exploring the life and work of 'one of the greatest literary voices of
our time’ Edna O’Brien. Really excellent this. Listen here. And for a moving and very entertaining
memory of their friendship, read Andrew O’Hagen’s Guardian piece here. She is much missed.
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Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages is coming to the Barbican Centre in London this
October. Curated by the poet and novelist Chris McCabe and artist Sam Winston, this is the first UK
festival of its kind, celebrating the huge impact art has on language and language has on art.
It’s a three-day festival running between Thursday 16th and Saturday 18th October and includes a
visual art exhibition, workshops and three days of live literature with performances from a whole range
of artists including Irvine Welsh, Raymond Antrobus, Liz Berry, Rachel Lichtenstein, Hanan Issa,
Stephen Watts, Joelle Taylor, Batool Abu Akleen, lisa luxx, Troy Cabida, Hanna Komar, Shamim Azad
and others. Hosted by Bidisha. Full details here.
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News just in
Here’s the best review of the year, or
any year. US Judge Steven Merryman’s
dismissal of Trump's lawsuit against the New
York Times. To be savoured with a fine malt, or
vodka martini.
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A message from Charles Boyle of CB editions
Two reasons why there has been little news of late. One, CBe isn’t publishing many books – except,
this month, September, Patrick McGuinness, Ghost Stations: Essays and Branchlines, see here.
Subtle, sensible, surprising, immensely intelligent essays by a man who publishes in more forms and
speaks more languages than I have fingers on one hand. Second reason, which is in fact the first
reason: in the context of the very bad shit that is happening in the world right now, and the complicit
refusal of the UK’s media and government to acknowledge the scale and horror of it, promoting a few
good books can feel beside the point. I don’t think I’m alone here.
Anyway. The soil is toxic but I cultivate a little garden. Last week a very good review of Caroline
Clark’s Sovetica appeared in Tears in the Fence; excerpts are on the book’s website page. I am very
excited about two books that are almost ready to send to print and that CBe will publish early next
year: Farah Ali, Telegraphy, and Erin Vincent, Fourteen Ways of Looking.
Again, a mention of the Season Tickets available from the website: 6 books of your choice for £50 or
10 for £75, free UK postage. This is much better than Amazon: some CBe books are listed on
Amazon as ‘not currently available’, others are listed there with crazy prices (£41.78 for a book selling
on the CBe website for £8.99). The disrespect here is large and mutual. For anyone buying one of
those Season Tickets, a free copy (while limited stock lasts) of the A1 poster of CBe covers 2007–26.
Oh, and why not, I’ll add in a free copy of Leila Berg, Flickerbook, or Todd McEwen, Who Sleeps with
Katz – just email to say which.
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Forthcoming workshops in October and November
Punctuation
Writers! Linguists! Scholars! Pedants! Join an online workshop to sort out the world's array of
methods of denoting rhythm, emphasis and meaning that we simplistically sum up as ‘punctuation.’
The first Annual Global Punctuation Summit will be on Sunday 5th October 2025 at 5pm London
time
Free registration here.
Poetry
How does the poet adapt to the advent of generative artificial intelligence, which is capable of
instantly producing a 'publishable' or even 'award-winning' poem? Human thought and feeling may be
extrapolated into linguistic expression increasingly convincingly, so what does the poet retain access
to that the machine can't reach?
Christodoulos Makris leads an online poetry masterclass on Thursday 16th October and full details
are here.
Prose
Things We Think With: Evocative Objects and Social History in Life-WritingHosted by Susanna Crossman (author of The Orange Notebook) on Wednesday 26th November
2025, 6.30pm GMT/7.30pm CET
Join @susannacrossman.bsky.social online for this look at memory, how we use objects, archives
and history (social history and micro-history) in life writing hosted by @saloneurope.bsky.social.
Susanna will be discussing objects and memory, Proust, social history, archiving the body, Ernaux
and more. Only a very few places left! eventbrite.co.uk/e/things-we-...
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Compensation
If you’re an author you may be entitled to compensation for each book ‘scraped’ by LibGen,
the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI.
Millions of books and scientific papers have been captured in the collection’s current iteration and,
following a successful class action in the States, compensation to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars is
earmarked for distribution
Authors (and publishers, but mainly authors): check for your name in the list of books that Meta used
without permission or royalty payments to train AI. You may notice that translated editions of your
books also appear.
If your name is there, they probably owe you £3,000 per book.
OpenAI whined that if every eligible author files the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every
author I know and hope you will do the same
More on this here and here. It takes only a matter of seconds to add your name to the list of claimants
(after checking that you’ve been scraped, that is)
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Liverpool Irish Festival
Liverpool Irish Festival is back from 16th–26th October 2025, with more than 30 events across the
city, celebrating Irish arts, culture and heritage. The UK’s largest Irish arts festival is expected to
welcome 8,000–10,000 visitors over its ten-day run. The festival kicks off with Eimear McBride (who
was born in Liverpool) in a free-ranging conversation with myself. Full details here. An edited
recording of our natter will be available online throughout the festival.
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Guillermo Stitch and The Coast of Everything
Not published until 16th June 2026, the forthcoming novel by
Guillermo Stitch will be a literary highlight of the year and the online
teaser campaign has already begun, so do get on board and brag to
your friends that you’re an early adopter.
Guillermo will be writing on/about/in/under but mostly around The
Coast of Everything on the 16th of each month at Substack.
Subscribe to receive a complimentary hotel and/or monthly
dispatches—subscription is free and will stay that way.Click here: guillermostitch.substack.com
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Ariel Anderssen klaxon
BDSM model and author Ariel Anderson shares some eloquent and incisive thoughts on censorship
and online regulation here
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Stuart Hall Essay Prize
The second Stuart Hall Essay Prize has just reopened to submissions until Monday 3
November.
Open to submissions from UK-based entrants aged 18 to 30 inclusive, the prize invites new and
unpublished writing that connects with Professor Stuart Hall’s ideas and impacts broad public
discourse. The prize will award £2,000 to a selected writer whose essay connects with and offers
originality and value to a field of debate with which Hall engaged throughout his life and contributes a
radical critique of contemporary society. The award aims to stimulate a new generation of thinkers
who can offer original, lively and topical contributions to the lines of political, cultural and educational
inquiry which Hall pursued. Academic, journalistic, creative, biographical and other approaches to
writing the essay are welcomed.
Submissions are due by 5pm GMT on Monday November 3, 2025. Learn more about the Essay
Prize submission brief, eligibility and assessment criteria via the project page here.
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Podcast Corner
The Two Kevins, Boniface and Duffy, make a very welcome return with Episode 5 of The Last King of
Elmet, our favourite podcast. It’s like being in the snug of a Yorkshire pub of an Autumn evening, with
a pint and a pie and a couple of convivial geezers rabbiting on about all kinds of nonsense.
Featuring: The Mystery at Thorncliffe Park; From Hebden to Hollywood; The Postal Paths; Everything
we do is Music; Boxers’ Knuckle; RMS Titanic and The Book of Bogs.
Listen here.
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‘Two sugars Jools’
Here’s Bluemoose Books publisher Kevin Duffy (him again) talking
about his Hollywood pal Julia Roberts (right), who stars in the
forthcoming telly adaptation of Rónán Hession’s debut novel
Leonard and Hungry Paul. Listen here. More on this in ‘Media
news’ below… Incidentally Rónán (him again) will be taking part in
this year’s Dublin Book Festival as part of one-day event looking
at class and belonging, on Thursday 6th November, starting at
7pm with Lisa Harding and Elaine Feeney, hosted by Derek Hand._________________________________________
Lucky bleeders, lucky bleeders
From Daily Reckless, the ever-reliable and
tirelessly inventive Tommy Mackay takes a
diary entry from James Lees Milne and
mashes it up with a fondly remembered toe-
tapper from Ian Dury and the Blockheads.
Listen here.
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Rufo Quintavalle writes:
Advance warning for what promises to be a very special evening of film and literature on Friday 21st
November.
2025 is the 50th anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini's film, Salò, and also the 50th anniversary of
Pasolini's death. Rufo’s father, Uberto Paolo Quintavalle, was one of the principal actors in this film
and wrote a book about his experience on set, Giornate di Sodoma. The book, which has long been
out of print, is a precious first-hand account of what it was like to work with a giant of world cinema on
one of the most important and controversial films ever made.
Rufo will be talking about his father, his book and his relationship with Pasolini as part of a special
50th anniversary screening of Salò at The Nickel Cinema in Clerkenwell, London on Friday 21st
November. The Nickel is a fiercely independent grindhouse cinema with a fully licensed bar and
video shop, a beacon of cultural light in the heart of central London's increasingly homogenous
darkness.The Nickel will also be screening a special preview of Salami Asylum to introduce the evening. And
there will be a Q&A and book-signing of Rufo’s poetry collection, Shelf, in the bar afterwards.
Tickets are not yet on sale but the event is likely to sell out fast so be sure to sign up for The Nickel's
mailing list or follow them on Instagram
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Opening this month
An exhibition showcasing the Solange and
Stephen James Joyce Collection, now conserved
at the University of Reading’s Beckett Archive (the
world’s most comprehensive collection of Beckett
materials).
This is housed, improbably, in the
Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) which is
certainly worth a visit in its own right.
Full details here
(I can’t help observing that the bequest should
really be called the Solange and Stephen James
Joyce James Joyce Collection)
A handlist of the c1000 objects in the collection is
available here.
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The Glue Factory long read
This month’s long read has already circulated online, but deserves the widest possible
audience. So my thanks to Sam Jordison of the mighty Norwich indie Galley Beggar Press for
letting me share his thoughts from indie publishing’s front line (and do support indie
publishers!)
These are hard times for publishers.
Don’t let me unduly alarm you. Almost as soon as Gutenberg started producing his Bibles in 1454, publishing
enterprises started discovering that market forces were against them. In fact, one of the earliest bankrupts was
Johannes Gutenberg himself, who called in the receivers in 1456, just two years after he began printing.
Since then, there has probably never been an era in which publishers haven’t had something to complain and
worry about. But there has also never been a time when publishers haven’t muddled through. Nor has the
demand for printed volumes significantly waned. In the long term, I’m sure, publishing will survive
In the short term, however, there are real problems. So let me alarm you a little. Here in the UK, the publishing
industry has been hit especially hard by the combined effects of Brexit, the war in Ukraine and theincompetence of
the previous Tory government, and publishers using printers in the Far East have been hit by
global increases in transportation costs. Like everyone, we’ve had to deal with increased inflation and decreased
consumer confidence. We’ve also had extra pressures of our own. The war in Ukraine, for instance, had a huge
impact on European paper-supply chains – because until that point a large percentage of wood pulp came from
Russian and Ukrainian forests.
For our small company, Galley Beggar Press, the cost of producing a book has more than doubled since 2015.
Back then, in response to a social media post which asked what on earth publishers were doing with all the
money, we published a breakdown of the production costs of a ‘typical’ book, and the sort of profit margins that
this typical book, and print run, might see. The figures in 2015 were tough enough, but we thought it was time
to run those calculations again.
Before we get into the numbers, a few caveats. These are ballpark figures and also personal – based on general
knowledge of the trade and the bills, estimates and cash-flow sums that we deal with every week. Costs vary
from print-run to print-run and publisher to publisher – but this survey should still give you a good idea of what
publishers have been up against. And since we small presses are so often the canaries in the coal mine, they
should also give an indication of some of the challenges to come for bigger publishers too.
These costings are based on a print-run of 3,000 copies. As around 40% of the costing is the initial set up, unit
costs go down the more copies you print. In 2014, for instance, after our second title, A Girl Is A Half-formed
Thing, won the Women’s Prize, the unit cost was 47p for a 27,000 print-run; in 2023, an 11,000 print-run of our
Booker Prize-longlisted title After Sappho was £1.73 per unit.
Ordering a very high print-run to bring down the unit price, however, is a limited option for smaller publishers
and the literary imprints of even the bigger publishers. Meanwhile, even a print-run of 3,000 represents a
significant risk for many small publishers – and plenty of books will have smaller runs and higher unit costs as a
result. It is also worth pointing out that these costs are for non-illustrated books, and as soon as you factor in
their requirements (most notably, heavier paper) the unit costs go up even further
Distribution and discounts
When you sell into a bookshop, the bookseller (and wholesalers such as Gardners) will require a discount. This
is the amount off the cover price that the retailer pays. Generally, the price for which the bookseller buys the
book from the publisher is less than (roughly half) what the consumer ultimately pays at the till.
For the ‘big booksellers’ and chains, the retailer discount will vary according to the publisher and the number of
copies that they buy in. The big shops in the UK, Waterstones, Foyles and Blackwell’s, in our experience, do
take into account the size of a publisher and its capacity for discounting. For orders of under 400 units, the
discount will be roughly 50–55%. For much larger orders (which would require a larger print-run, and are thus
not directly relevant to the above figures), the discount might be anything from 60–68%.Independent booksellers
and shops generally either buy in from Gardners or ask for a lower discount of 45%.
This is all on a sale-or-return basis, which means that if a bookseller doesn’t sell a book, they can return it. This
is a hangover from paper shortages in the Second World War. It’s something booksellers still need (they are also
up against huge challenges) but we’re the only industry I’m aware of that has this system.
Summing up
What does this all add up to? Here’s one example:
If a bigger bookseller buys in 600 of your titles (£8.99 RRP in 2015, £10.99 in 2023), using a 50% discount, in
2015 the publisher will be paid £2,697; in 2023, £3,297. That is… an increase! (Thanks, bookshops!) Or it
would be an increase if you excluded all the other factors. Let’s break it down.
The author – who, after all, wrote the brilliant book – needs a royalty. At Galley Beggar, this is generally priced
on the basis of net receipts (ie the amount we receive from the bookseller), not RRP, and on a rising scale (an
‘escalator’). It might look like this: 10% of net receipts up to 3,000 copies; 12.5% after that (up to 5,000 copies);
and 15% after that. (This royalty is higher than the industry standard and we’d love for it to be higher still. We
are writers ourselves, as well as publishers…)
So, after the royalty payment, you have: £4.04 per unit (2015) and £4.94 per unit (2023). There’s the 25%
distribution1
fee as well, which leaves: £2.92 per unit (2015) and £3.57 per unit (2023).
Oh wait! We haven’t included returns (unsold copies sent back to us by retailers). Let’s be optimistic, and say a
7.5% return rate – and we’ll have: £2.23 per unit (2015) and £3.04 (2023).
OK! So finally, let’s take off the actual cost of producing the book itself: £1.30–£1.80 in 2015 and £2.83–£3.50
in 2023.
That leaves us with, in 2015: £0.43–0.93; and in 2023: £–0.46–£0.21.
Profit margins haven’t just halved – they’ve plummeted.
These pressures are being felt across the industry, but they tend to hit small presses first. To go back to the
impact of the Ukraine war, for instance, most larger publishers will have had reserves of paper that will have
helped tide them over the initial rises in print costs in 2022. We’ve heard that these reserves are now coming to
an end, so they’re likely to start feeling more of that pain now. But in the meantime, small presses have been up
against it for over two years, during which time we’ve lost Red Dog Press, Bearded Badger Press, Henningham
Family Press, Wrecking Ball Press, Fledgling Press, Sandstone Press and Handheld Press, to name just a few.
When Handheld Press announced they were winding down, founder Kate Macdonald spelled out the issues
in The Bookseller: ‘the refusal of paper prices to go back to where they were before Brexit, and the Ukraine war
and the rising costs of the overheads… The cost-of-living crisis, which shrinks the amount of cash available for
spontaneous book purchases on the high street and by our committed online customers. Being unable to sell our
books into the EU directly any longer, without doing unfeasible amounts of customs paperwork for each sale.’
What next?This tallies closely with our own experience at Galley Beggar Press – and with the worries that several other
publishers have privately expressed to me. We’re all facing similar pressures. We all know it’s hard. The
question that remains is: what can be done?
There isn’t an easy answer, given the wider forces that are affecting the industry and the financial constraints on
our new government.
My dream would be to see the return of something like the old Net Book Agreement, allowing publishers to set
prices and have more certainty about their returns and discounts. More possible perhaps would be an industry-
wide recognition that book prices need to rise. Also, more recognition that books are beneficial to society and do
more than bring in financial returns. It would help everyone, for instance, if there were business rate and tax
reliefs for bricks-and-mortar booksellers. It would also greatly help if the Arts Council were able to give more
direct support for book production and literary excellence than they are able to now.
More immediately, the best solution is probably the one that has ensured publishing has survived this long: lots
of people buying lots of books. Buy direct from publishers, buy from Waterstones, buy from your local
independent. You are buying a stake in the survival of our world of letters.
Fondly,
Sam
A version of this article first appeared in The Author, the quarterly magazine of the Society of
Authors. It was co-written by Eloise Millar, Sam’s co-director at Galley Beggar Press (and his
much better half). Thanks to them both for so generously allowing me to share it here.
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Best of both worlds
If you know the LRB bookshop in Bury Street, Bloomsbury
(a Rosetta stone’s throw from the British
Museum), you’ll know they used to have a really wonderful cafe.
After trading for 17 years it closed
down last July and has been much missed.
For more than thirty years my favourite place to eat and drink
in London has been St John in
Clerkenwell, the restaurant and bar co-
founded by the brilliant chef Fergus
Henderson and his business partner
Trevor Gulliver. They pioneered ‘nose-to-
tail’ eating (not for the faint-hearted) and
have since gone on to run a small chain
of St Johns in Spitalfields and
Marylebone. Their latest venture (but
you’re ahead of me already) will be to
take over and run the LRB cafe, which
opens for business today, Wednesday 1st October.
St John at the LRB will be open from 8:30am until 6pm daily ‘serving a menu of sourdough bread,
croissants, Eccles cakes and doughnuts alongside coffee, tea and hot chocolate, with savoury tarts,
sandwiches and wine available from lunchtime. Appropriately for the bookshop setting, St John’s
signature madeleines will be baked to order for peckish bookworms seeking a Proustian snack.‘Full details here.
I’m so pleased that two of my favourite places are becoming one favourite place, a
counterweight to the rampant enshittification we see all around us daily.. Expect to see me slumped
blissfully in a corner most lunchtimes, when not chumbling my way contentedly around the
bookshelves.
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Listen up!
The British Audio Awards (known as the Speakies) are new
this year and two noteworthy candidates are Wendy
Erskine’s The Benefactors (a polyphonic novel here
performed by a large cast, including family members) and
All My Precious Madness by Mark Bowles, published by
Galley Beggar Press and read by Paul Hilton.
Winners will be announced on Monday 24th November
2025.
Full details on the Speakies website
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Your only man
Tony White’s wonderful short story ‘Plain Speaking’ written to mark the
110th anniversary of the birth of Brian O’Nolan aka Flann O’Brien (and
first heard when he read it at our online gathering Carthorse Orchestra
on Saturday 2nd October 2021) is now collected in a new textbook for
grammar school students in Germany: Great Britain in Nine Short Stories
from @cornelsenverlag.bsky.social. Details here
And you can read the story on the website of the Irish Literary Society,
._________________________________
New Faber poetry
This was published (but not much promoted, which is to say I’ve only
just become aware of its existence) by Faber in August. A new Seidel
collection is always an event and I’ve just ordered So What. He’s an
acquired taste, said a friend, reprovingly, and if that’s the case I’m
delighted to have acquired it. There’s nobody quite like Seidel. From
the Faber website:
‘Frederick Seidel declares ‘I’m not as old as I used to be. I’m getting
young.’ In So What, he speeds across the island of Manhattan on his
racetrack-only Superbike, hurtling into the tenth decade of his life and
sixth decade of his extraordinary career. But the path from youth to old
age has not been straightforward. With a disarming combination of
acuity and playfulness, the poet confronts his vulnerability while using
his artfulness as a form of subversion. Rather than contemplating a return to childlike innocence, he
writes, ‘I explode with rage and age.’ In doing so, he summons up a tidal surge full of shotguns and
wristwatches, late-blooming love and sex, and stark glimpses of American life. At its crest stands the
poet, looking over all this wreckage and creation, and he proclaims: so what.’
So What was published in the US last year. Here’s a very good review in the LARB by Erik Verran
Order from the publisher here.
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And finally…
A call back to the start of this month’s newsletter: the new
Barbellion Prize website is now up and running but we can’t yet
accept donations as the new community bank account is awaiting
approval. I’ll contact all newsletter subscribers when it goes live.
In any case the next newsletter (which will appear on Saturday
1st November) will coincide with the full relaunch of the prize
and an associated online event that very evening. Special
guests to be confirmed.
That’s all for now. If you’re still reading this, thank you.
DavidPS Authors and indie publishers: let me know if you have a book coming out or a project you’d like to
promote and I’ll be happy to include details in future newsletters. These appear monthly throughout
the year, on the first of each month.
And do let me know if you’d rather not be on the mailing list and I’ll happily stop badgering you.
D.
