You do not need me to tell you that the economics of publishing literary fiction are difficult but, I hope you do not need me to tell that there are a whole slew of publishers in the UK and US, but also elsewhere, publishing superb works of fiction, usually on a shoestring. A couple of articles, well worth reading, have been published in the past few days which bring these issues to light. The first appeared in the Observer on Sunday and covered the situation in the UK, commenting on several key publishers but by no means all. My colleague Michael Orthofer at the Literary Saloon quoted one publisher who said The thing about the publishing world is that most people don’t understand how it works. He wryly commented that he certainly did not and I can only concur, as nor do I.
Today I received one of the regular newsletters from Weatherglass Books not mentioned in the Observer article, which explains the difficulties of publishing literary fiction and it is very eye-opening. You can subscribe to the newsletter here. I urge you to read both articles and do what you can to support small publishers of literary fiction in the UK, US and elsewhere. A loss of any of these would be a tragedy for quality fiction.