Library Christmas Tree at Goldsmiths, University of London
Dear readers,
Thanks for being there, for reading our texts and for letting us know what you think. It’s always nice to hear from you – it brings us a lot of joy and keep us on our toes!
We’re going to be offline for a while, but we’ll be back in January and hope you’ll be, too!
To end this year on a happy note: the British literary field has just seen its own little Christmas miracle in the saving of the small and rather special indie publishers Galley Beggar Press. They published – among other books – Lucy Ellman’s novel Ducks, Newburyport (in interior monologue over 1,000 pages) that just won the Goldsmiths Prize 2019 and Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, that went on to win the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2014. The publishers were left with a “40,000+ black hole” after The Book People went into administration. So Eloise Millar and Sam Jordison set up a crowdfunding page. In the shortest time, half of the industry got together to save Galley Beggar Press. Over 1,800 people donated money via the site (and apparently some also brought over cash in person) and commented on social media why they wanted to save the indie. It was really amazing to see so much solidarity in these times of competition, prize wars and Brexit-related gloom and hatred. For a moment, at least, it seemed as if love was actually all around.
So enjoy the holidays, be kind to one another, save our libraries and support ‘your’ authors, indie publishers and bookshops…
Happy Holidays from
Gesa and Sandra
P.S.: In case you want to know more about the Galley Beggar Press story:
- Link to their Gofundme page with the original call and the thank you note: https://de.gofundme.com/f/galley-begging
- Alison Flood: “Book People collapse plunges small publisher Galley Beggar into crisis.” Guardian 18 Dec 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/18/book-people-collapse-plunges-small-publisher-galley-beggar-into-crisis
