By Kevin Duffy • Published 11th October 2012
Finally the metropolitan press have realised that the best literary fiction titles being published emanate from small, independent presses as seen by the inclusion on The Man Booker list of three independents. SALT based in Norfolk, MYRMIDON in Newcastle and AOS in High Wycombe, nearly in London but far enough away not to be labelled a London publishing house. For years now, the significant weight of the big six corporate publishers seems to have been directed towards celebrity, generic and formulaic publishing. You see, they need to fill the coffers to generate double digit growth for their shareholders and if this means all you have to do is replicate what is successful, then Scandawegian cookery books with a vampiric twist, is what you will get. All of us readers who just want to read great stories, well written, can whistle. That’s not to say that the big six don’t publish some great fiction, they do, but the literary publishing pie is getting smaller and smaller as the sleberiture advances get bigger and bigger. This is great for independents. Our concern is for the story, storytelling and getting the best possible book in to the hands of readers.
Here at Bluemoose, we start local. Get the local bookshops and libraries interested and soon enough the book will travel across the border into Todmorden, then Manchester and Leeds and before you know it New York and Hollywood are excited. London is, and has been, somewhat blinkered to what is happening outside of its glitzy box. Just because we don’t have seven Lucindas an Aphrodite and a Cassandra in the PR department, it doesn’t mean our books are not worthy. They are, and the rest of the world is now reading Bluemoose books. If you can read Russian and Bulgarian then in the next couple of weeks you’ll be able to read GABRIEL’S ANGEL by Mark Radcliffe, KING CROW by Michael Stewart and FALLING THROUGH CLOUDS by Anna Chilvers. I won’t do a Colin Welland and say “the Moose is coming”, but watch out for NOD by Canadian author Adrian Barnes. Hollywood really is coming.
Here’s an article published by The Guardian on the rise of independents. Check out our my quotes near the end:
