‘If we didn’t feel so continually threatened, the business wouldn’t get out of bed.’ So said Philip Jones, editor of book industry magazine The Bookseller, just last year. Feeling doomed is part of the job spec, so when you choose to run your own book publishing company, you’re welcoming into your life constant existential threat and stress so powerful that a masseuse will declare your crunchy, knotted back muscles the worst they’ve ever seen. 

That’s what my own co-founded publishing company 404 Ink gifts me, and no wonder, considering that in 2023 numerous fellow small publishers closed across the UK, citing issues such as Brexit and the cost-of-living crisis for their collapse. One demise close to home was Sandstone Press, an Inverness-based publisher of Booker-listed titles and popular figures such as Nicola Sturgeon. They appeared successful and buoyant, only to disappear seemingly overnight, to the shock of readers and, crucially, their now unmoored authors.

With publishers unable to get their books posted to customers in EU countries without endless, expensive customs forms (with no guarantee they’ll actually get over borders) and printing distribution costs soaring to an all-time high, it’s sadly not such a shock to those inside the industry.  When 404 Ink won Publisher Of The Year at Scotland’s National Book Awards in 2022, I used our acceptance speech to reveal that at the time of winning, we had minus £5000 in the bank and even more anxiety over our sustainability, threatened by Brexit and the Conservative government’s refusal to acknowledge the damage they’ve done to export. 

Despite a track record of reliable, popular publishing, we failed to get bank loans, and growth-obsessed investors practically sneered at our profit margins. The struggle between public perception and reality is real, something we are constantly trying to redress through transparent, possibly over-sharing social-media posts and blogs. 

At these times, all we can do at 404 Ink is keep our heads down and get on with the work of publishing some of Scotland’s most exciting new writers while relying on precarious public funding via Creative Scotland. The existential threat gets us out of bed, but the support of loyal readers and talented writers keeps us going, no matter how much Conservatives and Brexiteers may seemingly want to hold us back.

404 Ink’s full catalogue can be found on their official site.