Scribblers' Year in Review: Celebrating Wins, Learning Lessons, and Looking Ahead to 2025
Plus: Behave like a Badger. And don't feel guilty about it.
Good morning Scribblers,
I saw a post the other day asking ‘Are you finding it hard to get up at 5.30am this Winter and be productive? Well of COURSE you are: follow the badger’s example. They’re hibernating, and not feeling guilty for slowing down!’ I do really like this idea of working seasonally, even if it’s not always logistically easy to implement, because my brain is so attuned to sunlight. I confess to getting up when sunlight comes into my bedroom these days (an hour post alarm) and struggling to stay on track when it leaves the flat around two-thirty in the afternoon!
But I am feeling Christmassy, having consumed too many coconut macaroons on the Christmas markets, and the festive season has me feeling quite reflective. And I’m not quite ready to settle down on the sofa with the dog and a Bailey’s - we have a goal!
Bluesky visibility is excellent, as is the kindness of strangers, and readers are already helping us to reach our goal! If you’re yet to finish the Christmas shopping list, you might like to gift a year of books to your loved ones, with our 2025 subscription, or grab a themed bundle…
Or you might like to gift a subscription to our substack! They’ll receive our weekly Friday newsletter and access our massive archive which includes posts like ‘Building a Writing Platform Without Social Media: A comprehensive guide’, Self-Promotion for the Self-Doubting Author and The finances of indie publishing are broken. We need a radical rethink. And get a lifetime 20% off our books!
Bookish updates!
Northern Soul Magazine reviewed novella ‘‘Lying Perfectly Still” - always a joy to read a reviewer who really ‘got’ the guts of a book, and we’re in a second reprint of magical short story collection ‘The Naming of Moths’ which is a lovely stocking filler for any feminists and Angela Carter fans…
2024: The good stuff, and the not-so-good stuff, FOTW edition
(Let us know your top good stuff/not-so-good stuff in the comments for your year!)
The Good Stuff
Stu from Verve Poetry Press said I was the most ‘awardiest person’ he knows, and I’ll take it haha! We only have a few weeks left to say we’re the 2024 Small Press of the Year (North) and the British Book Awards, which is going to be a career highlight for a long time. We also were pronounced a Future Leader by The Bookseller and we won a Manchester Culture Award for Promotion of Environmental Responsibility for our school workshop series! (We speak to Northern Soul about this here!)
We formed really strong relationships with librarians and booksellers, with Gloucester Road Books naming ‘The Process of Poetry’, our best-selling craft book by Rosanna McGlone a book of the year! LoveReading UK also named ‘Lying Perfectly Still’ as a staff pick this year.
Substack has been a massive highlight this year - yes, you! It’s great to say about something in the book industry: ‘the numbers definitely do work out’! Email is just a lovely personal connection, isn’t it?
Our ebook sales are growing massively! Especially to libraries.
The Not-So-Good
Tragically, author Laura Fish passed away before literary novella ‘Lying Perfectly Still’ was released. She has left a huge hole for many.
I reached burnout, and pledged to reduce our intern programme significantly (which I appreciate is also not-so-good for the northern ecosystem and the three universities locally)
Sadly, we say goodbye to PR and Events Assistant Louisa Wagstaff this month, who is off to Australia, and we hope she has an incredible time.
The Middle-Ground (the learnings!)
Since 2023 we’ve been open to all genres, as long as it has a social conscience at the heart of the narrative. But I’m not so sure we have the right audience for Science Fiction (though dystopian and speculative on the literary end, yes!). If we were a bigger publisher, we could allocate money and time to building an audience, but as a Small Press, I feel it’s important to hone in on what we do best. Experiment, and then evaluate.
We’re not quite ready to have team members financially. And that’s okay! We’re dynamic, and we’re growing, and we’ll get there. 2025 is set to be a big year.
Our best-selling books this year had the most events, travelling all across the North West, East and Midlands. Good to know, but will have to think how we juggle this and not reach burnout… Anyone want to host an event for us haha!?
Until next Friday Scribblers, lots of love,
Isabelle x
Love reading this update and seeing you on Substack!