Published 13 August 2013 by

Reasons not to date a small publisher …

Note: this list refers to the traditional male small press publisher. In the case of the new generation of female small press publishers, change He to She and delete clause one.

  1. He will have a beard
  2. He will be broke
  3. He will not want to go on holiday
  4. When he goes on holiday he will visit every bookshop within fifty miles
  5. He will already have a partner, better off than himself
  6. He will talk non-stop about how terrible Waterstones is
  7. Apart from when complaining about Amazon
  8. Or moaning about the Arts Council
  9. He will have friends who are poets
  10. He might be a poet
  11. At launch parties everyone will ignore you unless you are a writer
  12. He will start work at 6.30am
  13. His idea of fun is a book launch 200 miles away
  14. His idea of nice wine is Kwiksave BOGOFF, left over from a book launch
  15. He will not own a car, and can\’t drive
  16. He will ask for lifts in your car, without knowing he is doing it
  17. His office will be very untidy, spilling over with unsaleable books
  18. It will not be clean
  19. On principle he will only publish books that lose money
  20. He believes in the creative economy while contributing nothing to it
  21. He resents successful small presses
  22. He will not have a pension plan
  23. Other than you are his pension plan
  24. He will never retire
  25. His share of the phone bill will be 80%, but he will pay only 50%
  26. He will have authors staying who have travelled 250 miles to read for twenty minutes to an audience of seventeen
  27. You will have seen the same seventeen people at every reading for thirty years
  28. 50% of his income will go on buying books
  29. He will talk to you at length about the book he is editing
  30. He will ignore your advice when you suggest changes or wonder who would buy such a book
    31. He knows the names of every book reviewer in the UK. None of them know his name
    32. He anxiously scans the review pages of the Guardian every Saturday even though his last book review in any broadsheet was in 1992
    33. He mutters
POSTED BY AT 23
andrew

andrew

Writing

2 Comments

  1. Anonymous said:

    31. He wonders whether he is part of the reason so many authors have gone indie.32. He starts to 'like' indie books and their authors on Facebook.33. He gives up publishing, writes a memoir, and releases it independently.

    13 August 2013
  2. Anonymous said:

    Sounds mostly like he's really no. 10.

    18 August 2013

Comments are closed.