“Music’s sexy, dance is sexy. Not books.”
The words are those of Paul Hippsley, managing editor of Guildhall Press. Last year the largest publisher in the northwest of Northern Ireland, received more than £47,000 in financial support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. This year, it got zero.
“Overnight the flagship publishing industry was cut to nothing,” says Hippsley.
In Belfast, Blackstaff Press's funding was also wiped out – from £82,000 to zero.
“The value placed on the arts is being made loud and clear,” says Blackstaff’s managing editor Patsy Horton. “It’s hard to be optimistic and it’s hard not to be frustrated and angry at the way the arts are regarded.
“I think there’s not enough value placed and on books and on culture – too often it’s seen as elitist, and as a luxury, rather than as a necessity, and in Northern Ireland it’s still riven along political lines, so that needs to change.”
For its part, the Arts Council says its cuts are the unavoidable consequence of a 25 per cent reduction in its own budget, down from £14 million to £10 million in the last four years, including a 20 per cent cut in 2015-16.
Given the economic climate, it acknowledges that it has had to “make a series of very difficult strategic decisions” and, in the case of publishing, has moved to funding on a title-by-title basis.
This has allowed Blackstaff and Guildhall to claw back some financial support in recent months – with Blackstaff awarded just under £37,000 and Guildhall more than £24,500 – but both publishers say they have no option but to rethink how they operate.
“It might mean balancing our list more,” says Horton. “For example, we’ve done seven road racing books because we know there is a strong market for them – so it might mean balancing books like that with publishing new writers.”
Guildhall Press is also branching out – into digital projects, into youth training opportunities, and into contract publishing – but without financial help, their ability to publish new local fiction will be severely curtailed.
“We’ve never made any money from a fiction book, ever. We got our first funding from the Arts Council about 10 years ago, and fair play to them for that, because that allowed us to start publishing our own stuff in terms of poetry, prose and drama. But if they’re not going to subsidise us who’s going to publish the poetry collections? Who’s going to give that writer a first break, a first chance? How can you put a financial value on that?”
Financial pressures are compounded by geography and by what Horton describes as the lack of a developed publishing infrastructure in the North.
“We’re caught between two centres of activity in Dublin and London,” explains Horton, “and we tend to sit uneasily between them. We have brilliant support from the bookshops that are here, but in Belfast the number of outlets for book sales has really decreased, and that’s difficult for us.”
Hippsley agrees. “We’re huge in Derry, we have 100 per cent support and you can’t improve on that, but outside of Derry we get very very little, and it’s down to not having the resources, the personnel and the finances to access those markets.”
Bangor author and screenwriter Colin Bateman’s first novel, Divorcing Jack, was published by Harper Collins in London after being turned down in Belfast and Dublin. A big launch and an award nomination meant it sold well initially, and it returned to the bestseller lists in Northern Ireland when it was made into a film.
“The film company had advertised in Belfast for extras, and all those extras went out and bought a copy,” says Bateman. “That was about 50 copies, and that was all it took to get to the top of the bestseller list in Northern Ireland. It’s a really, really small market.”
Given this, is it feasible for Northern Ireland have a successful publishing industry? “It depends what your goals are,” says Bateman. “If it’s to have a small, vibrant publishing industry putting out local books and publishing new writers, then absolutely.”
He cites the Open House literary festival as an example of this. “Everyone in town was talking about it, and that’s where local publishing should be, capturing local people’s interest.”
Poet Julieann Campbell published her first solo collection, Milk Teeth, with Guildhall Press this year, and cites the enthusiastic literary scene in her home town of Derry as one of her key motivations.
“If it wasn’t for that I don’t think I’d be a professional writer now, I don’t think I’d have branched out if I hadn’t seen what other people are doing. I describe myself now as a writer for the first time ever, and I think that’s come from the strong artistic community we’re surrounded with in Derry. You see what other people are doing and you support them and they support you and that way it grows and evolves.”
Lynne Edgar agrees. Her first poems were published in the local papers, then in the now defunct Ulla’s Nib, and in Poetry Ireland Review.
“There is a lovely grapevine. I don’t know whether it’s particular to the north of Ireland or not but in the writing community people encourage each other, even if they know it’s going to compete with their own work. We love to meet up with each other and see each other’s work getting published.”
She’s one of a growing number of Northern Ireland writers turning to the local literary scene for advice, support – and publication.
Founded last year, Poetry NI describes itself as a "multimedia, multi-platform showcase and resource provider for poets" and hosts a quarterly online poetry journal FourXFour, micropress Pen Points Press and Purely Poetry, a monthly live poetry night in Belfast and Strabane.
Freckle, which aims to celebrate the people and landscapes of Northern Ireland, is now on its third issue thanks to crowdfunding, and Belfast-edited Irish Pages, boasts a readership of almost 3,000 in Ireland and abroad.
Online, relative newcombers Abridged and The Incubator have built up a substantial following, and The Honest Ulsterman, which once published the likes of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley in its print edition, returned in an online-only format last year, complete with an active Twitter presence.
The ease and accessibility of the internet as a publishing tool has allowed writers and literature-lovers to start their own publications. Put together by a group of friends who "always wanted to do a magazine", the material for the first edition of SHIFT was generated from an open mic night in a Derry cafe earlier this year.
The £50 raised covered enough to photocopy their first “fanzine for lovers of the written word”, explains founder Geraldine Quigley. “There are no outlets for getting your material published. You send things off and six weeks or six months later you get a letter back saying no thanks.
“If someone is scribbling away at the kitchen table and you have a piece, send it to us. If we like it and it’s well-written we’ll try and get it published for you. We know there will be lean months and there’ll be good months, but as long as we’ve got £50 we’ll keep photocopying it and keep putting it out.”
With no shortage of up-and-coming writers, this hyper-local approach could be the key to continued success in this changed publishing landscape.
Next year The Journey, a film scripted by Bateman about the relationship between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, will hit the screen, but he’ll also publish Paper Cuts, a series of stories set in a Bangor newspaper office, as eight separate e-books.
“The change from the traditional publishing route is a good change because anybody can publish these days,” the author says. “I like the idea of lots and lots of little start-ups, people doing their own books, rather than huge publishing companies with government grants. Realistically that isn’t going to happen locally because the figures just don’t add up.
“It comes back to how small the country is. We need to think small - boutique operations, a small number of titles, and doing things locally.”
Freya McClements is a writer and arts journalist based in Derry
