Independent small press to publish new titles despite resurging pandemic
Like many small arts organisations, the lack of government support has meant that Elsewhen Press has been struggling to keep publishing during the pandemic.
Elsewhen Press is a publishing house specialising in high quality, entertaining and thought-provoking speculative fiction – specifically set up in 2011 to champion new authors. The books they publish often address current, real-world issues but through a fictional prism. Obviously, one of the most significant real-world issues over the last two years has been the global pandemic that has been ravaging many aspects of society, affecting people’s health and mental wellbeing, as well as the resulting economic effects. The impact has been anything but fictional.
“As a small business we have had no support from government,” says Peter Buck, Elsewhen Press Editorial Director, “and our income has been decimated. Meanwhile the costs of paper, printing and shipping have spiralled. Before the first lockdown, many pundits predicted an increase in the sales of eBooks, but that was not the experience of most indie presses; indeed book sales slumped, as people struggled to pay even their everyday bills on reduced incomes. Some indie presses have had to give up completely. We have been lucky enough to be able to keep going thanks to personal loans and family support, and we have even managed to publish those new titles that we had already planned – albeit most of them somewhat later than we had intended. We felt that it was important to keep publishing as much as we could. For many readers, being able to escape into a good book is what has been helping them cope with the unprecedented stress of everyday life. For some authors the enforced isolation has encouraged them to write.
“As autumn arrived this year, it was looking like things might finally start returning to some sort of ‘new normal’ with bookshops open again, even some science fiction and fantasy conventions restarting. At the Novacon convention in November, our first in-person event for almost two years, we had a joint, belated launch party for the titles we had published since the initial lockdown, and we finally got to reconnect with some of our readers. But that fillip has been shortlived, and with the impact of the Omicron variant we are now no longer certain if we will be able to hold launch parties for the new titles that we will be publishing at the start of 2022.
“Whether or not we are able to hold launch events for them, we will be publishing a number of great new books early next year:
* Blood Legacy, the second book in a fantasy series from Cardiff-based writer Tej Turner – we published the first book in the series, Bloodsworn, in January of this year;
* Interference by Terry Grimwood, a science fiction novella where grubby politics is still interfering when humanity goes interstellar;
* The Forge and the Flood by Durham-based author Miles Nelson, a YA fantasy allegory that touches on identity and the illusion of difference – we published Miles’ debut novel Riftmaster in March this year;
* The Seven Succubi by Simon Kewin, a witty contemporary police procedural with a difference. Instead of CID, the investigators work for the secretive HM Office of the Witchfinder General – during lockdown in 2020, we published the first book in the series, The Eye Collectors, which one reader described as ‘Dirk Gently meets Good Omens’.”