IN DEPTH
Opinion Launching in lockdown
Lee Brackstone
Ten days before the release of the first book under the White Rabbit list, lockdown hit the UK. How could a nascent list negotiate such a challenge?
Rabbits out of the hat O
meant. “Andrew Weatherall’s dead.” Andrew’s death prompted an outpouring of grief and love across the creative industries—and, for me, the real challenges of launching a new imprint in an unfamiliar environment, aſter 23 years at Faber, started then. Andrew and I had collaborated for a decade at Faber in the cosmiche space where literature collides with music, and we planned to continue that with quarterly co-hosted White Rabbit Live events and more. As it is, mournfully, our future relationship will arrive in the form of a biographical project that is just about as ambitious as any I have worked on.
Early March was limbo time. I was yet to publish my first two titles which were to bookend April: Richard Russell’s account of his life at the independent colossus XL Recordings and Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards and Weep. As a fan of Lanegan’s catalogue, I had fantasised for many years about a book by him and here it was, arriving like a blessing, just as I had decided to take the biggest leap of my professional life. The alchemy of circumstance indeed, Mr Weatherall.
Time seemed paralysed or vacuum-packed, looking back at March. There are many things to get right and so many ways things that could go wrong when creating a new imprint. Most importantly, you have to get the support of your colleagues and create energy around the list. It’s a faith business, publishing; built on evangelism and the capacit to create enough collective conviction around books which will hopefully gather enough tsunami-force
34 14th October 2020
There are so many things to get right and so many ways things could go wrong when creating a new imprint
n Monday 17th February 2020, I was working from home, a privilege I enjoyed occasionally before it became the new normal. It was a bleak, chilly morning and I had taken a break from editing the new David Keenan novel, Xstabeth, which was to be our first novel on the soon-to-be launched music-oriented imprint, White Rabbit Books. At midday my phone buzzed and it was Jeff Barret of Heavenly Recordings. In tears, he simply said, “Andrew’s dead”. Incredulous, I asked what he
to crash their way into the public consciousness. On 23rd March, just a week aſter the launch part at The Social [bar in Fitzrovia, central London] for White Rabbit, our relationship with time changed once again: lockdown.
The lost months We were just 10 days away from publishing our first book. We had a huge part planned for Richard Russell. We had a hugely ambitious tour, concluding at the Barbican, planned with Mark Lanegan. Cancelled. This year is litered with ghost events, festivals, publications that were starved of oxygen and stumbled through the year on life support. Suddenly the channels narrowed and I was consumed by dread. Without bookshops and events, how would we get any visibilit for White Rabbit and connect with the book trade, readers and the media? How do you create an intimate experience when you can no longer get together and spread the gospel of books? As ever, in terms of crisis, you turn to your friends and collaborate. I’ve worked with Robin Turner and Carl Gosling at The Social for more than a decade,
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