The indie publishing mavericks shaking up the UK books world

Last year, all of literature’s big prizes went to small publishers. In a risk‑averse climate, edgy debuts and ‘tricky-to-sell’ foreign titles have found a home at the likes of Fitzcarraldo Editions and Sort Of Books – and the gamble has paid offA quiet revolution is afoot in British publishing. Earlier this year, when American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis brought out his latest bestseller, The Shards, the book came to UK readers not from his usual publisher, Picador – his home for nearly four decades – but from a small independent company, Swift Press, a freelance-powered outfit so light on overheads it doesn’t even have an office. Likewise, Sheila Heti, the prize-winning Canadian author of zeitgeisty autobiographical cogitations Motherhood and How Should a Person Be?, recently announced that her next book won’t be out with her regular publisher, Penguin Random House, but with south London indie Fitzcarraldo Editions, not yet 10 years in business. Last year’s Booker winner, Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka, came to us courtesy of the smallest publisher ever to win the prize, husband-and-wife indie Sort Of Books. In 2022, all the glittering literary prizes went to indies – not only the Booker, but its sister prize for translated fiction, the International Booker, as well as the Nobel, the Goldsmiths, the Pulitzer and Australia’s A$100,000 (£80,000) Victorian prize for literature. The last four remarkably were all won by Fitzcarraldo, the UK home of celebrated... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2023-07-16 08:00:02 UTC ]

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