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FEATURE PUBLISHING’S EXODUS


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Graeme Macrae Burnet is on the 2016 Man Booker Prize shortlist) is moving from Glasgow to Manchester (OK, that’s heading south). And Other Stories is joining the Northern Fiction Alliance, a group that brings us together with Manchester’s Comma Press, Leeds’ Peepal Tree Press and Liverpool’s Dead Ink Books to showcase our authors’ work abroad. All four of us are at Frankfurt this year, walking the aisles and taking meetings, and from next year we will exhibit jointly and may also bring authors for showcasing events. We hope to attend other trade fairs, too. The north of England has an incredibly vibrant artistic scene, be it music, theatre or writing, and a far lower cost of living than London. The opportunities this affordability presents are nothing new. Much of the best poetry publishing—never a very lucrative field—has been based in the north for decades: Manchester’s Carcanet, Newcastle’s Bloodaxe, and Arc, based in Todmorden, to mention just three. If, in financial terms, the truly literary, truly groundbreaking novel is becoming the new poetry, then perhaps it’s natural that young, independent fiction presses will set up in the north. London is a fantastic, vibrant, multicultural city, with hordes of well- read, book-buying people. But since most of England’s fiction and non- fiction trade publishers are based there, there are limited opportunities for a publisher to really make an impact in the city. London is bloated with events. No one can keep up with all the literary events on offer. It can be easier to get a good and inquisitive audience outside of the capital. In Sheffield, we will be getting to know


and working with a great literary scene full of talented graduates. We’re excited about the discussions we’re having with organisations such as the Off the Shelf festival, the city’s two prestigious universities and literature organisation New Writing North. We hope that in the long-term, northern independents can work with regional support to develop an ambitious publishing industry and create a broad range of viable alternative destinations for graduates looking to work in publishing.


Pictured are recent And


Other Stories publications from top I’ll Sell You A Dog by Juan Pablo Villalobos (translated by Rosalind Harvey); Vampire in Love by Enrique Vila-Matas (translated by Margaret Jull Costa); and Trysting by Emmanuelle Pagano (translated by Jennifer


Higgins and Sophie Lewis; published in the UK in November)


AND OTHER COUNTRIES Publishers are thriving away from the metropolis in other countries too. Minneapolis is one such success story: it has grown to be a centre of publishing excellence far from New York. As well as the already mentioned (and highly recommended) independent publishers’ distributor Consortium, it has three major publishing houses: poetry specialist Milkweed Editions, Graywolf Press and Coffee House Press. And Other Stories publishes in the same general area as the last two, and I’m impressed by what they can do. They make it clear that they choose books on literary value, and are non- profits (just like And Other Stories). They also have great support from the city of Minneapolis and the state of Minnesota in general, enabling them to plan and implement ambitious growth programmes in the past 15 years, to run creative outreach programmes and to publish books that are of real long- term literary value—even if they won’t necessarily sell well immediately. Pick up a Graywolf Press catalogue and you will probably see nearly equal numbers of poetry, literary non-fiction and fiction titles. No commercial New York publisher would do that! To be fair, And Other Stories, at only


five years old, isn’t yet in a position to take a risk on publishing much poetry, but that will come. And the Graywolf model works: Claudia Rankine’s poetry title Citizen deservedly became a mainstream and international success. Graywolf has carved out a real reputation as the nurturer of creative non-fiction and essay books, such as Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams, and the press also publishes difficult but brilliant translated writers such as the late Mexican author Daniel Sada. Coffee House also consistently chooses the most interesting writers from the US and abroad, including translated authors such as Valeria Luiselli, and British writer Dan Fox’s non-fiction Pretentiousness, and it uses creative


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There must be people in Penguin Random House asking: ‘What if we moved to Manchester?’ With overheads slashed, profits up and salaries increased, the future of mainstream publishing would be assured


events and outreach to punch well above its weight. Although I’ve talked about the situation in the UK and US, many other publishers around the world have found strength in publishing from a regional base. France is built around Paris just as much as the UK is around London, yet one of the country’s most outward- looking publishing houses, Actes Sud, is based in Arles in Provence, a city of not much more than 50,000 people. Yet it rivals Parisian houses like Gallimard. On the other hand, Germany’s


historical past as a confederation of smaller states has led to a healthier distribution of powers. Many cities thrive in a variety of industries, and the great German publishing houses are dotted around the country: Carl Hanser in Munich, Fischer in Frankfurt (though founded in Berlin), Suhrkamp in Berlin (though established in Frankfurt) and Rowohlt in Hamburg (originally founded in Leipzig). If it works in Germany, why should such moves necessarily be limited just to independent publishers? There must be people in Penguin Random House asking: “What if we moved to Manchester?” With overheads slashed, profits up and salaries increased, the future of mainstream publishing would be assured. But whatever the big publishers do in the future, nimble independents are doing it now. 


Stefan Tobler is the founder of And Other Stories. Born in Brazil to English and Swiss parents, Tobler lived in Dresden for a spell after his degree, before completing an MA and a PhD at the University of East Anglia. He translates texts from Portuguese and German into English.


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