Small Press Futures, founded in 2025, is a
collaborative consortium of indepedent and
UK-based publishers and editors.
enquires@small-press-futures.info
* * *
The Small Press Futures Bookshop
(Our first experiment / a call for support.)
Events & Workshops
(At the Small Press Futures Bookshop
and elsewhere.)
NewS
(Rolling updates and press coverage.)
An Open Letter
(How can the industry work together
to ensure the longevity of the UK’s
independent presses?)
Signatories
(An alphabetical directory of supporting /
participating publishers.)
Xerox
(An irregular column and/or blog from
the Small Press Futures publishers.)
The small press futures Team
(Core members and makers.)
¶ News
[...] Rolling updates
and press coverage.
13.10.26
Melina Spanoudi, The Bookseller /
Small Press FUtures launches crowdfunder
for cooperative bookshop in peckham
See here. / Paywalled
04.12.25
Lucy Mercer & Livia Franchini, LitHub /
Life-giving, Imaginative and Underfunded:
Small Press Publishers in Crisis
[Our] ability to take risks and to publish books that would struggle to find a home with bigger publishers, is our strength, and in many ways the reason we exist; I think, fundamentally, this is why we believe the survival of small publishers matters. Without the existence of publishers able and willing to take risks, the literary ecology would be a lot more homogenous and closed-off.
A conversation with
Jack Thompson,
Jess Chander,
Sam Fisher
& Kristen Vida Alfaro.
See here.
02.12.25
Melina Spanoudi, The Bookseller /
Indies aim for Cultural Impact Study
amid ‘challenging economic backdrop,’
FutureBook hears
Small presses are seeking funding for a cultural impact study demonstrating the impact of indie presses, The Bookseller’s FutureBook conference heard on Monday 1st December.
The idea was outlined during a panel on the crisis faced by indie presses, chaired by writer and editor Lucy Mercer. Peninsula Press publisher Samuel Fisher said the study was inspired by the Booksellers Association’s report on the crucial role of indie bookshops in the UK’s cultural landscape. [...] The BA’s research has been an “incredibly powerful tool for lobbying,” according to Fisher, who said it provided central government with “hard numbers to digest in terms of the impact of bookshops.”
Publishers are developing a similar document reflecting the work of indie presses. “We we wanted to get together and say, what are the problems?,” Fisher said. “Start to think of some solutions, and then perhaps work together with other people in this industry who are minded to think on it as well.”
Indie presses will also host a series of events throughout 2026, in collaboration with journals and universities, to address different aspects of the letter. “It’s not about complaining, it’s about action,” said Kristen Vida Alfaro, director of Tilted Axis Press. “What can we do to make this more sustainable, so that we still exist?”
[...]
See here. / Paywalled
18.11.25
Lucy Mercer, The Bookseller /
Don’t invest in Artificial intelligence,
invest in the future of the book
Small-press publishers’ passion for and understanding of literature, combined with the creative, diverse and alternative perspectives and spaces that they provide through their books, means that like an underground river they are a source of deep life for the literary industry. However, they are facing a severe crisis that is now draining them dry, down to the riverbed. On top of the lack of pay, which has always been unsustainable, the increasing scarcity of public funding combined with the ongoing impacts of the collapse of the Net Book Agreement, the reign of Amazon, and now the rising costs of book production are leading them to a critical tipping point.
[...]
See here. / Paywalled
17.10.25
Michael Caines, The Times Literary Supplement /
NB. Micoraggressions
Times are tough for small presses. The newspapers do not readily yield up much space for reviews of their books; state funding is hard to come by. Or so we read in the archives of the Bookseller, which provides a chronicle of small presses’ struggles in recent decades—the difficulties cited above refer to news items from 2003 and 2008, respectively—accompanied by much harmonious trumpeting of their achievements.
Before concluding that things were ever thus, however, consider a letter published in the Bookseller’s most recent issue. Twenty-three signatories, representing small presses in the UK such as Bluemoose, Galley Beggar, Rough Trade and the87press, here spell out the full awfulness of the current situation. The cost of book production has doubled in the past decade, not helped by interruptions to paper supply since the invasion of Ukraine (a major supplier of paper pulp to the UK). Storage and distribution cost publishers a “mimimum of 25% of the net value of sales,” and larger distributors “will only take on publishers with a minimum of over a million pounds.” As for funding: you might as well, for now, forget about it. The strategy implemented by Arts Council England five years ago, “Let’s Create,” seems peculiarly averse to books; and since ACE has delayed any new applications for its National Portfolio Organisation grant programme, it will be 2028 before any new funding is received. Creative Scotland, at present, apparently supports no publishers at all via its “Multi-Year” funding programme.
Given these factors and other challenges that larger publishers can much more easily surmount, such as export costs inflicted by Brexit, and it is unsurprising that several small presses (such as Henningham Family Press, Wrecking Ball and Sandstone) have shut up shop over the past few years. What’s to be done? The letter proposes a round table, to which “key stakeholders from across the industry will be invited” (and details are given for anyone who wants a say to make contact). The agenda: “How we imagine a sustainable future for independent presses, and the writers and translators we publish.”
[...]
See here. / Paywalled
10.10.25
Lauren Brown, The Bookseller /
Indie Presses in Existential Crisis
call for Trade Support.
More than twenty independent publishing houses—including Bluemoose Books, Tilted Axis Press and Influx Press—have written an open letter calling for the trade to “work together to ensure the longevity of the UK’s independent presses” as they face an “existential crisis.” “If we don’t enact change now, there is a real possibility that many indie presses will be unable to continue operating in the next five years, indefinitely altering the breadth and diversity of the UK’s literary landscape,” the letter reads.
[...]
See here. / Paywalled