Open Letter on the Future of Small Press Publishing in the UK
As leading UK indie publishers, we come together to raise awareness of the economic realities of our sector and what is at stake if we are unable to continue.
The UK is home to a rich landscape of independent publishers who take risks on books that have been ignored by the wider industry, launch careers, and spark stylistic innovation. We have published titles that have been shortlisted for, or have won, many of the major prizes (The Booker and International Booker Prizes, The Women’s Prize, The Folio Prize, The Goldsmith’s Prize, The Gordon Burn Prize, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Desmond Elliot, Republic of Consciousness, and more). Many of us offer open submission windows, nurture new writing talent, and make the industry more accessible to authors from underrepresented communities. We develop close relationships with independent booksellers, enrich readers’ experience through events and community engagement, and stand elbow-to-elbow with larger publishers to bring innovative and diverse literature to wide audiences. Collectively, our authors and translators enhance UK publishing’s bibliodiversity by supporting writers of colour, queer and trans, working-class, and intersectional authors, alongside translations from languages less-represented in Anglophone markets.
Inflation, war, and cuts to national arts funding have increased the challenges faced by independent publishers and we are now confronting an existential crisis that will determine the trajectory of literary publishing in the UK.
These are the key challenges that we are facing:
Inflation:
The war in Ukraine has affected paper supply and energy costs, significantly increasing our expenditure. Ukraine was responsible for a large amount of the paper pulp used in the UK, and interruptions to supply have caused huge jumps in costs.
The combination of custom fees caused by Brexit, and now Trump’s trade tariffs, have caused fulfilment issues for our two largest foreign markets: Europe and the US. Due to complicated and uncertain tax arrangements, we are losing customers and subscribers, with a huge knock-on effect on sales income.
Austerity and the cost-of-living crisis has put pressure on indies to increase freelancer wages, though our own salaries have stagnated, while we are simultaneously pressured to keep our book prices low.
Production issues:
The cost of producing a book has more than doubled in the last 10 years.
The unit cost of printing and producing a title in 2015 was somewhere between £1.30–£1.80. By 2023, that unit cost rose to somewhere between £2.83–£3.50, an increase of 40–100% (see this article for more detail).
As these costs continue to soar, the RRP of a book remains generally static, in part due to high print runs from Big Five publishers which allow them to keep costs low. With distribution and bookshop discounts on top of these rising costs, our already small margins are shrinking further.
Sales and Distribution:
The retail landscape is data-driven and risk-averse, leaving less room for indie publishers in major retail shops.
Dominant online retailers offering next-day delivery, alongside competitive practices by corporate booksellers which drive down prices, make it impossible to compete with customer expectations around shipping and cover prices.
The lack of review coverage and the rapidly shrinking space in national media outlets makes it hard for a book to ‘sell in’ to bookshops and then ‘break out’ to wider success.
There has been a reduction in the number of distributors available for small stock and low turnovers. Storage and distribution will cost publishers a minimum of 25% of the net value of sales, while larger distributors will only take on publishers with turnovers over a million pounds.
Funding:
Both Tory and Labour governments have significantly cut funding for the arts, severely impacting the sector.
UK independent presses have largely relied on government funding, particularly Arts Council England’s (ACE) National Lottery Project Grants (NLPG) and National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) grant programmes, the latter of which is the only grant programme to offer multi-year core funding.
In 2024 and 2025, ACE delayed any new applications for NPO funding, which means that any new grantees won’t receive funding until 2028. Most recently, ACE’s application portal, Grantium, malfunctioned, delaying any new NLPG project applicants for weeks. Given the time it can take to write an ACE NLPG bid, and the waiting times to hear back, a month without access to apply was a further setback for many small presses.
Similarly, many Scottish publishers rely upon Creative Scotland’s (CS) Open Project Funding (OPF) while no publishers are supported by their Multi-Year Funding (MYF) route. 2024 also saw tumultuous arts budget cuts and U-turns from the Scottish Government, forcing CS to temporarily close OPF applications and delay MYF funding decisions until 2025.
We are also seeing the impact of ACE’s ‘Let’s Create’ strategy outcomes, which have admirable aims, but make it significantly more difficult than the previous ‘Great Art for Everyone’ strategy for small presses to access funding to publish books. As a result, it has become more challenging to secure smaller individual grants to support our ongoing work and to cover the core costs involved in publishing our books.
Many small presses are running on the ‘potential’ of funding, which is an unsustainable operational model. Without investors or guaranteed grant funding, there is no sustainable future.
Many independent publishers have spoken out in support of Palestine, and taken a stand for BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) and PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). This has on occasion had a direct impact on funding outcomes. The leadership of independent presses on this issue is taking place in an environment of increasing state censorship of Palestine solidarity and repression of Palestinian artists. Publishers supporting Palestine risk malicious attacks to reputation and cyber security – a significant drain on resources. As a result, independent presses are hit harder for standing with our Palestinian authors and colleagues and for our commitment to social justice.
This accumulation of pressure has created unsustainable workloads and increasingly uncertain prospects, significantly impacting our well-being and capacity to manage these workloads. Independent publishers face limited cashflow and inconsistent labour, yet the industry often holds us to the same standards as the Big Five publishers.
These challenges are already having a measurable impact: recent years have seen the closure of numerous indie publishers including Henningham Family Press, Red Dog Press, Bearded Badger Press, Handheld Press, Wrecking Ball Press and Sandstone Press, while 404 Ink has announced their intention to close in mid-2026 as they wind down operations. 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.
How can the industry work together to ensure the longevity of the UK’s independent presses? Following the publication of this letter, we will be inviting key stakeholders from across the industry to come together to discuss how we imagine – and action – a sustainable future for independent presses, and the writers and translators we publish. If you would like to participate in this roundtable, or otherwise feedback on this letter, please follow this link.
