IN DEPTH
London Book Fair Special Company Spotlight: Sort Of Books
Sort Of relishes Booker success as tight curation pays dividends
By far the smallest publisher to have won the Booker Prize, the founders of Sort Of Books explain why they publish so few titles—and how that ethos lifted Shehan Karunatilaka to the big timetime
Tom Tivnan @tomtivnan O
PICTURED: SORT OF FOUNDERS MARK ELLINGHAM AND NATANIA JANSZ, AND (BELOW) SORT OF’S IN-HOUSE HOUND WOOSTER
f the many plucky underdog stories emerging aſter Shehan Karunatilaka’s The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida won the Booker Prize last October—largely unknown author, just the second triumph for a Sri Lankan—one was about its publisher, as Sort Of Books became, by some distance, the smallest house to ever win the English language’s premier book gong. It is worth pausing to appreciate by how much Sort Of played giant killer. Since husband-and-wife Rough Guide founders Mark Ellingham and Natania Jansz launched Sort Of in 1999, it has produced a small, curated list, releasing three or four titles most years. Sort Of’s annual sales through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market have only twice exceeded £1m: in 2022 and 2002 (£1.1m and £1.4m, respectively), mostly hovering in the £300,000 to £400,000 range annually. The previous smallest Booker- winning publisher was Oneworld, but by the time of its first triumph (with Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings in 2015), it was regularly earning £2m-plus per annum through BookScan. “This is it, the extent of Sort
Of,” Jansz says as she welcomes me to the indie’s bright and neat Hampstead office, spreading her
arms to indicate her and Ellingham’s desks, separated by an immense dog bed currently occupied by “the other Sort Of full-timer”, a sweet and slobbery gigantic wolfound called Wooster. It’s not quite the extent as the publisher has a small team of freelances, most of whom have been there since the start, including cover designer Peter Dyer, tpographer Henry Iles and publicist Ruth Killick. Small it may be, but being able to handle big books is not new to Sort Of. In fact, it had a monster hit straight
06 31st March 2023
If you have a novelist or non-fiction writer who isn’t an obvious six-figure advance, then often a small publisher is your best hope
Mark Ellingham
Photography: Dominic Sansoni
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