The Four Hour Work Week - Is it possible in publishing?!

December news: Culture Awards, Showcases, Best-sellers and climate anxiety workshops!

A happy Friday Scribblers,

You have made it through the week and, for most of us, we are well on our way into the Christmas slide… I’ve been starting my days early at the gym before work, with an audiobook in hand (I know, what a saint right, even if I only stay there for about twenty minutes haha!) and my current read, ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’ is genuinely inspiring me. Have you heard of Timothy Ferris? He claims that you can ‘escape the 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich’. The overworked publisher in me laughed!

One of the things Tim asks is: What would you do if money was no object?

I’ve always been a saver and a budgeteer, so I’ve always run FOTW as a tight ship. This year, I’ve been on a journey to trust in the business more: we are selling more books than ever before, our authors are moving readers like never before, and so why not invest with the belief that the only way is up?

So I’ve been trying to delegate. I’m starting small, with EBooks - I’ve become a reluctant coder over the years, and I’m not even bad at it, but did I go into publishing to stare at HTML code? No. Is it a useful thing for a Managing Director to be doing? No.

So far it has not been easy. Delegating tasks means I have to allow tasks to not be done to perfection, or at least not in the way I would do them. That is hard to accept! My belief, and the belief of Tim’s book, is that though this costs the business money, you free up your time to work on other aspects of the business, or your life - and that is invaluable.

What else would I do if money was no object?

I’d behave like Penguin Random House does.

I’d engage in all the publishing glamour and hone in on our brand. The kind of book post you see bloggers ‘unbox’ on Youtube and bookstagram. Watch this space: in January 2024, our packaging, branding, and merchandise - for the first time! - is about to get glitzy. Big publisher style. And green.

So what have we been up to this month?!

Look at Dr David Hartley being gorgeous and performing from ‘Fauna’ at Blackwell’s Northern Fiction Alliance showcase! Great to get an airing for this short fiction collection, three years after it exploded onto the scene. Grab a 2 book Hartley bundle for £10 here. “Fiercely original, these are stories that are at times disturbing, absurd, and darkly comedic, and which refuse to conform to the constraints of time and space. A startling collection, that begs to be read aloud. Hartley is a brilliant storyteller, with the kind of  imagination that leaves you feeling a bit fearful for your own safety.”- Lucie McKnight Hardy.

We did get glitzy! Thanks to you lovely lot, we were a finalist for the People’s Culture Award in Manchester and attended an award evening of 450 creatives at Factory International! It was a bit emotional, actually! To celebrate with you, code XMAS10 will get you 10% off any book you fancy in our store.

I visited the University of Manchester’s new Creative Industries MA to give a talk about work in publishing and I’m off to Loreto college this Friday to give a workshop on ‘Finding a Language for Climate Anxiety’. We have launched a reading pack and resources around this workshop here if you are looking to read widely around utopian and dystopian narratives!

Our Rep Inpress shared this with us - our bestseller for bookshop sales this year has been Liam Bell’s psychological thriller, The Sleepless! In The Sleepless, the struggle between blood ties and a powerful cult is laid bare.

Our overall 2023 best-sellers (across shop, bookshops, ebooks and events) have been Alice Fowler’s short story collection ‘The Truth Has Arms and Legs’ (In this captivating collection by award-winning writer, Alice Fowler, readers will be moved by the raw vulnerability of human connection, and the resilience that allows us to grow and thrive in the face of hardship.

In change, Fowler’s characters find the ability to be truly free.) and the not-even-yet-released ‘The Process of Poetry’ Edited by Rosanna McGlone (A unique collection of interviews with contemporary poets at the height of their craft. How does a subconscious thought become an award-winning poem? Journalist, Rosanna McGlone, speaks to some of the country's leading poets to find out.)

Lastly, we have just launched our 2024 Book Subscription!

• Receive 25% off all our titles all year, with goodies in each parcel!

• You will also receive a brand new limited edition tote bag and a year long subscription to our Substack worth £45 (weekly interviews, industry insiders, stories and writing tips).

• 3 novels, 3 short story collections, 2 poetry collections

• Each book will be shipped at least two weeks prior to publication! That means you will receive a new book almost every month to devour.

Check out the line up here.

That’s all our updates for today Scribblers, I hope you have a cosy weekend.

Take care,

Isabelle x