About the press

We started because a manuscript we loved had been turned down eleven times for being the wrong length. It was ninety pages: too long for a magazine, too short to sell. We printed six hundred copies, sewed them at a kitchen table over four weekends, and sold out in a year. That book is still in print and still pays for itself.

Fifteen years later the argument has not changed. There is a great deal of good writing that does not fit a commercial spine width, and somebody ought to be making it properly.

Everything we publish is section-sewn: folded, gathered and stitched through the fold, so the book opens flat on a table and does not crack at the spine on a third reading. Perfect binding is cheaper and we have never used it.

We buy paper by name — mostly Munken and Arctic, uncoated, cream where the text will take it — and we specify the grain direction, which sounds like fussiness and is the difference between a page that turns and a page that fights you. Text is set in metal-derived faces with proper old-style figures, at a measure of sixty-six characters, leaded generously.

Covers are commissioned. Every one of our jackets is original artwork, printed litho or letterpress in two or three colours, usually with a blind impression you can find with a thumb in the dark.

Six things we will not compromise on, listed here so you can hold us to them.

• Section-sewn bindings on every title, hardback and paperback alike
• Named, uncoated paper chosen for the specific book, not the specific budget
• Original commissioned cover artwork, never stock images
• A generous reading measure and old-style figures throughout
• Contracts that revert rights automatically after eighteen months out of print
• Paying contributors before we pay ourselves

Ellen Mangan founded the press and still does the acquiring, the editing and most of the arguing. She was a copy-editor for twenty-two years before that and has views about the semicolon.

Joss Feary joined in 2016 and runs production: paper, printers, binders, the schedule, and the standing weekly disagreement with Ellen about extent.

Rae Okonjo looks after everything else — rights, the shop, the subscription list, the post — and reads the submissions pile faster and more generously than either of the other two.

We take a table at eleven fairs a year, and there is nearly always a bound sample to handle. Stockists and fairs · Contact