Our Publishing Community
At October Books, we prioritise independence - not just in the way we think, but across every level of the business, from management, right the way down to our book ordering and selling. Indeed, in today’s context, where Amazon wages war with the everyday brick and mortar seller and where the two largest publishers in the world are set to merge (Penguin and Simon & Schuster), supporting small and independent publishers has become not only a priority, but a necessity.
Roberto Callaso wrote that the art of publishing is the act of tying together disparate texts to present a unified identity. Whilst The Big Five (Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Harper Collins, and Macmillan) certainly publish many, many excellent books per year, it is nevertheless a fact that for the more radical, trailblazing, and representative publications, we must look to our indies. As with every large cultural institution such as Penguin, they must prioritise what is marketable and as such, they tend to avoid the more experimental and radical fringes of the literary world.
It’s with our favourite independent publishers then, that we find this more radical offering. As we wrote in a recent article for the Manchester University Press, the key to responsible and socially conscious book buying is “to create a vibrant and self-sustaining cultural ecosystem, wherein the titles are in conversation with one another: Pluto Press might prioritise non-fiction centred around radical social issues, yet these same tenets can be found in the fictional output of a publisher like Galley Beggar Press, who promote radical approaches to fiction as a form in and of itself.”
However, whilst creating and maintaining a rich, representative, and radical cultural ecosystem is of the utmost importance to us, we also recognise other extremely important factors which have helped us prioritise that independent spirit. For one thing, most of the independent publishers we buy from are based in the UK. This means that by ordering directly through a publisher like 3TimesRebel or Fum D’Estampa, we’re contributing in a more fundamental and direct way to local economies, supporting not only the publishers themselves, but also in turn their paper suppliers, their printers, and their social media teams. Similarly, by purchasing locally, we don’t suffer the environmental impact of having to ship hundreds of thousands of books across seas, through valleys, past customs checks, and into our shop.
Additionally, many of these smaller publishers allow us to place small orders. This is of fundamental importance for a small non-profit like October Books. For one thing, it means we can keep on top of the latest releases from Fitzcarraldo Editions and Pluto Press without having to take a large financial gamble on ordering a large amount of stock. This in turn impacts our sales, as we have a wider range of titles from a broad spectrum of publishers. Similarly, it means that when it comes to returning unsold titles (a sad reality of the book industry), we aren’t returning umpteen boxes of the same book!
We’re proud to provide that much needed space for independent publishers to flourish. We feel that it is a part of our social, economic, and political duty as a space in which ideas are exchanged to emphasise this need for a healthy cultural ecosystem. To our independent publishers - we salute you!
