If large U.K. publishers are uneasy about where the industry is headed, that isn't scaring new entrants, many of whom are cheeringly unperturbed by changing market dynamics. And they are learning to punch above their weight by combining forces.
One of these optimistic startups is Portobello Books, whose Philip Gwyn Jones reckons that change is the only certainty.
Portobello announced its presence in January 2005 and published its first novel, Glen Neath's The Outgoing Man, in May. But is this really a great time to be going independent? "Book sales are very strong in absolute terms," says Gwyn Jones, who looks and sounds like a rather superior, perhaps Freudian, psychiatrist. "They are just migrating. And the cost of entry is so much lower than it has been in recent times, with technology allowing savings on all fronts."
Like many of the year's newcomers to small publishing, Gwyn Jones is a refugee from big publishing, having run HarperCollins's now-extinct Flamingo imprint. Books, he notes, are being bought by a wider constituency than ever before. Yes, publishing has become more celebrity-driven, with more books on sports personalities, TV chefs or anyone who spent a few hours in the Big Brother household. "But these are still sales that weren't there 20 years ago, of books that didn't exist 20 years ago.
"There has been a de-aristocratisation," he stumbles over the word, and grins, pleased with it, "of publishing and bookselling. It's increasingly a winner-takes-all book economy, but the books are often significant historical or literary titles, so we can't be doomladen."
Gwyn Jones is not hugely sympathetic to the industry's moans and groans. "If people are squealing about it, it's because nothing stays the same and they can't cope. I know publishing doesn't lend itself to short-term cycles. Yet things change so fast—channels of supply, what technology makes possible—and you can only be certain of flux. The squealing and pain comes with an inability to control."
And retailers? In limbo. They don't know who they are or what they want to be. "The range bookseller is Amazon," Gwyn Jones declares, "because it can 'hold' everything. Retailers made a mistake in not trying harder to compete online."
Alongside fiction with a healthy proportion in translation, Portobello aims to publish "activist" nonfiction—current affairs, and politically and socially engaged books. "We want to go a stage beyond journalism, but a stage short of full-dress history."
New independents are learning to add muscle through cooperation. Portobello's sales will be handled by Faber, whose sales alliance includes Profile, Icon, Short Books and, more recently, Canongate and Atlantic.
More intriguing is an embryonic alliance between independent publishers and independent booksellers, inspired by Book Sense. Called i2i, it was the idea of another new independent, Emma Barnes. Barnes is co-founder of Snowbooks, which published its first novel Robert Finn's Adept, in July 2004. A former management consultant, Barnes is a talker, who will bend your ear for as long as you like. But she is also a doer.
She plans a Web site—"a trade version of Amazon"—where publishers can upload book data and, critically, updated pricing. Booksellers can use it to consolidate orders and get better discounts.
"Every publisher I have spoken to is thoroughly in favour," Barnes reports. That includes 25 independents, Pan Macmillan and one other unnamed large publisher. She has spoken to fewer booksellers, but they like it, too. i2i has now joined forces with the Booksellers Association, which was working on a similar project. Together, they hope to have a working model at the London Book Fair and to go live in May.
Among its early users are sure to be some of the latest crop of small U.K. publishers. They include contemporary literary fiction house Alma Books, founded by ex-Hesperus shareholders Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini; and Quercus, put together by Anthony Cheetham (of Century and Orion fame) and Mark Smith (also ex-Orion). New York crimemeister Otto Penzler will run the Quercus crime list.
Cheetham is an investor in the Friday Project, whose Clare Christian and Paul Carr are publishing books inspired by popular Web sites—like 2005 Blogged: Dispatches from the Blogosphere. The Friday Project's book are sold by Pan Macmillan, as are those of new specialist imprint Think Books, run by Ian McAuliffe and Tilly Boulter and concentrating on the outdoors, gardening and wildlife.
