"Run up the colours": newsletter May 2025

Early books, above … 176 Interruptions, scheduled for July, is a revised and expanded edition of 99 Interruptions (published in 2022 and now almost out of stock). In Ghost Stations: Essays and Branchlines, scheduled for September, Patrick McGuinness – novelist, poet, translator, editor, critic and speaker of several languages – writes about his personal history, the unofficial histories of places in which he has lived, and some of the lesser-known byways of European literature and art. Both books are available for pre-order now from the website.

The encounter with the bear that resulted in three fractured bones in my neck (see previous newsletter) is now history: the bones have healed, the neck brace I wore night and day for two months has been discarded, the bear has gone over the hill. Early in Master and Commander, one of several old films I watched over the past weeks while slumped on the sofa, Captain Aubrey gives this order: ‘Mr Boyle, run up the colours.’ So I did. Below, a slice of unfinished history: a size-A1 poster of the CBe book covers (and 3 pamphlets, 2 issues of a magazine) 2007 to now. The history is ravelled: some of the books are now out of print, some have gone to other publishers, some have been reprinted with different covers. There’s only one print of the poster; I may print a limited run, but how many people have enough spare wall space for a poster?

Shelf space may be easier. Eighty of the books on the poster are available from the website, either individually or – for bargain-hunters – in one of the Season Ticket bundles, 10 books of your own choice for £75 or 6 for £50. Among them are the last two books of Paul Bailey, who may now be among ‘the riotous dead’ but whose life was celebrated at a memorial service last week in the spirit of the titles of his books: Inheritance and Joie de vivre.

The Silly Season

The non-story so far … A man announces he’s setting up a press that will ‘focus on literary fiction by men’. He says he plans to publish three books next year. To date, he has taken on nothing. His website (which looks as if it’s been thrown together in 5 minutes) announces a submissions window of just one month (the current one) and offers no explanation at all of why the focus on men. Or any info about, you know, the tedious details of actual publishing: distribution, design, funding, etc. This is a hoax, isn’t it?

The non-story starts becoming a story when The Bookseller picks it up, and then the Guardian and The Times (‘Men-only publisher hopes to fix “imbalance” in world of books’), and then a BBC4 radio programme, and then a list of ‘Ten Independent Publishers to Watch in 2025’ (even though there simply ain’t anything to watch: no books till next year), and then the Guardian again with an op-ed story. The man who is starting the press mutters something about male writers of literary fiction getting a bad deal: they are under-represented, or overlooked. One’s heart bleeds. And suddenly everyone starts quoting statistics at each other – numbers of women/men on prize shortlists and bestseller lists, numbers of men/women working in publishing – and journalists ask agents for soundbites.

It’s quite possible that there are more good women writers around than men. It’s also quite possible that that editors at big commercial publishers are under pressure from their owners to deliver the New Sally Somebody (smart, young, female, photogenic, ticks the boxes). That’s how business – ‘the publishing industry’, ha – works. It is not how small independent publishers work. Some of these publishers do offer ‘correctives’ to mainstream bias – by championing POC or working-class writers or work in translation – and over time they can make a difference; but what I’m looking at here (and I’m putting this as kindly as I can) is a solution in search of a problem. Move along now. The only story here is about the crass, knee-jerk, clickbait way in which anything about books is treated by the media, and even that story isn’t news.