While studying an MA in Creative Writing, it was ritual to follow up our classes with a pint of beer in a nearby pub. This, of course, was where the real learning happened: sitting across your peers over a pint and sharing ideas, discussing and dissecting that day’s class. These always led to newer, better, sometimes, under the influence, quite nuanced ideas.
On several evenings, I sat with what is now the main team behind MIR, discussing how we should start our own publishing house. Each one of us had a different strength and we could pool it all together to get one off the ground. We even discussed budgets and how we should always maintain a pub fund — because that’s where we’d find the real authors (like us). But as the masters ended and each one of us got busy with our lives, that little spark of an idea hadn’t fully died in our brains. It continues to linger. So, obviously, when I was given a chance to talk to Catherine Evans from Inkspot, I jumped at it, if only to honour our old selves who dreamed of their own publishing house. (In some alternate universe, we did. Or maybe it’s in our future (timelines can get confusing).)
Below, you’ll find some valuable insights on running a publishing house, the pitfalls, the do nots and the dos from one who has done it all.
Catherine Evans is the cofounder of Inkspot Publishing. She is also the editor of fictionjunkies.com, a website which publishes short stories of all genres by authors around the world. Her first novel, The Wrong’un, was published by Unbound in 2018. Cathy is a trustee of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival and organises the annual ChipLitFest Short Story competition, which usually receives around 300 entries every year. She lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and daughter. She also has three grown-up stepdaughters.
Inskpot’s Journey
A: Can you tell me more about Inkspot Publishing? What was your aim right at the beginning and the editorial vision when you decided to set it up?
C: The reason I set it up is because I got a publishing deal for my second novel and I lost that deal. I had a choice: I could go through the whole submission process again, which as I’m sure you know is a horrible process. There’s a lot of timidity in publishing. People are very nervous about publishing things that challenge conventional thinking. So I set up Inkspot. Choosing a name was difficult because a lot of the really good names I thought of had already been taken. But Inkspot was nice and simple, quite playful, and I liked it.
I’d been helping my publishing partner, Jurcell, write a book The Neglected Samurai, for a very long time. It’s basically part memoir and part self help about martial arts. When I told him I was setting up my own publishing company, he decided to join me. That’s how the whole thing started. Most of my authors are with me either because I know them, which is difficult sometimes because I know some wonderful people, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to publish their books. You have to be very thoughtful about the books you take on. You have to take on things you believe will sell. And secondly, I can’t make a living from just publishing my friends’ books. One of my authors came to me because she won a short story competition I was involved in organising . She’d written a book about Jonestown. It’s called Paradise Undone, and it’s a novelized version of Jonestown. And the reason I’m in touch with you guys is because Bruno Noble is a Creative Writing student at Birkbeck and he’s one of my authors. He’s written The Colletta Cassettes. And in fact, his books only arrived here today. He hasn’t even seen his own book yet. It’s beautifully produced, the font is wonderful. it’s great. So I’ll be sending copies of these to Bruno later on.
It’s very exciting when you work on a book you love. It’s very rewarding working with the authors. I’m very lucky because most of my authors are very happy to take suggestions. They’re not precious about their writing and I can point out to them what I believe needs to change. Most of them are happy with that. Now, we’ve published five books. One was a compilation of short story winners which we did as a fundraiser for the Chipping Norton Literary Festival, and one of them is All Grown Up, the book that lost me the publishing contract. Then I have Bruno’s book, The Colletta Cassettes, another book called Fireweed, which is a post-second world war book set in Hamburg, and then Annie’s book about Jonestown. The unifying theme of all the books is that they’re commercial literary fiction. They’re not beach reads, but they’re not Franz Kafka either. They’re mainly quite literary, very entertaining books with great characters. And, that’s our ethos. We publish any book that we love. It doesn’t matter who the author is, whether they’re 8 years old or 80, whatever nationality or identity we don’t care, if you produce a good book, we will publish it.
The next book we have coming out is about a community of people who live on houseboats. It’s called Under Vixen’s Mere and that’s going to come out in September [2025]. We’re not publishing a huge number of books. In fact, we didn’t publish any last year. We published three in 2023, none last year. We’re going to do three this year. It all depends on when we find a good book to publish. We don’t have quotas as we’re very small. It’s just me and my two nieces. I’ve just lost one member of staff. She was interning for me. She’s now got a job with an academic publisher, so we’ve launched two interns into the publishing world.
A: That’s lovely.
C: Yes, it is. I’ve now got one niece doing social media for me and my other niece is working on distribution. She’s a real dynamo. So at the moment, we’re a family-run business. They’re both very young, in their twenties, so I won’t be able to hang on to them forever. But at the moment, they’re both learning a lot and having fun. Long may that continue.
A: That’s so good to hear. I like the sound of a family run business structure. Two questions arise from what you just said. One is about the distribution, but I’ll get to that in a bit. But the bigger question that I had was about the publishing contract you lost. How did that feel? From an author’s point of view?
C: It was devastating. The first book I published was with Unbound in 2018, and when I set up my own publishing company, I took the rights to my book back. They were quite happy to let me take the rights back because it hadn’t really gone anywhere. Unbound is a hybrid publisher, so you crowdfund the publication of your book, but they will only publish your book if they think it will sell. But as soon as your book’s out the door, they’ve moved on to the next one, and they don’t help you with marketing or distribution. That’s probably changed now as it’s now under new management. They’re now called Boundless, and have a new CEO, Archna Sharma. I’ve met her. She set up Neem Tree Books. She’s very smart, and I’m sure that she’ll turn it around. I’ve seen on the Bookseller that Unbound authors have not been paid for a number of years, and she’s not going to pay them until the business is back in financial health. It’s tricky, you know?
Going back to my second book, I got a publishing deal and I was really obviously delighted to get it. I lost it really late in the process basically because my main character is a mixed race character, and the publisher decided that I couldn’t write a mixed race character, and they wanted me to change her identity. I felt that would change the whole dynamic of the story if I did that. I refused and they sacked me. So that led directly to Inkspot publishing. I know lots of people have very strong feelings about this, but I strongly feel that one of the most important aspects about literature is empathy. If you have empathy for your characters and if you don’t rely on stereotypes, I personally believe that anyone can write about anything as long as they have empathy and understanding. There plenty of people who disagree with that, but it’s an opinion which is just as valid as anyone else’s.
A: Now that you have experience from the other side, do you look at that moment differently? Or do you take that as a lesson when you’re publishing someone else’s book?
C: Do you know, it hasn’t really come up as an issue. Actually, that’s not true. It came up in Annie’s book because Annie is an American Jewish author and she was writing about Jonestown. I don’t know if you’re aware of this – I wasn’t before I read her book – that about 80% of the people who died in Jonestown were black. I felt that Annie had dealt with the issue in a very sensitive way. She wrote from four points of view, and two of the POVs in her book were from black characters. She did it really well. For me, that was all I asked of her as an author. It’s about empathy and understanding. But until you asked me that question, I never quite put two and two together. For me, the writing, the story and the characters are really what’s important. I feel that a lot of this identity stuff is very divisive. It separates people and polarizes them rather than bringing them together. But it’s an important question. I think that some authors are probably guilty of trying to shoehorn diversity into their books for the sake of it and that’s irritating. When you read something that’s genuine, you feel as if you’re in a safe pair of hands, where the author has delivered you a character that’s fully formed and fully fleshed out and then you don’t have to think about all of these issues. You’re reading primarily to be entertained.
A: I was recently reading the God Killer trilogy by Hannah Kaner. It’s fantasy but there were a lot of characters who were fluid in their sexuality — everyone was fluid and it was kind of free for all. And it was so well done. I felt I’d been incorporated and guided into a world which was just full of love.
C: You were obviously entertained. That’s the most important thing, isn’t it? We’re reading to be entertained and sure, it’s always nice to learn something and it’s great if a book makes you think about something in a different way but it has to be done primarily through entertainment and love. Didactic books are very boring.
A: Yes, you’re right. So now I’ll come to the other part where I wanted to ask you about the publishing house specifically. If someone were to set up a small publishing house, are there funding opportunities, such as government support or public or private bodies that can help out financially? And if there are, how do you access these?
C: We haven’t accessed any external funding. We’ve funded everything ourselves. My publishing partner’s name is Jurcell Virginia. He’s based in Amsterdam. We put in 50/50, all of it ourselves. Any sales revenue coming in is allocated accordingly. We have not had huge sales with our books. We haven’t got a best-selling book on our hands yet. I hope that will change because the wonderful thing about books is that especially the ones that we publish is they’ve got very, very long tail. They won’t go out of fashion.
You ever read The Martian by Andy Weir? It was made into a film starring Matt Damon. That book was self-published years ago and it took a really, long time to take off. But on the other hand, the very sad truth in publishing is that most books do not sell more than a few hundred copies. When you think about the sheer number of books that are published and now you have self-publishing in the mix… I’m not snobby about self-published books because I think a lot of them are good, but there is also a lot of rubbish too, and how does a reader know the difference? I mean, there are some clues. Usually the cover designs are terrible. The typesetting is really bad. It’s not professional. They lack the little things like a logo on the spine. If there’s no logo, that immediately gives away that it’s a self-published book. Often it looks awful on the inside too. The paper quality may be bad, or the font crooked or difficult to read. There are so many things that you have to learn in order to produce a quality book. It’s not just the writing, it’s also the book production. You ignore that at your peril. You have to have a good quality product.
Publishing House Nitty-Gritty
A: How did you of tackle this entire book production learning when you started Inkspot?
C: Trial and error. Trial and error. The Colletta Cassettes is our fifth book and when I opened the boxes this morning and I saw this book, I was absolutely delighted. That was not true of my first couple of book openings. The first two we published were Fireweed and All Grown Up. The font for both books was far too small. Look at this [shows The Colletta Cassettes]. The font is beautiful, really easy to read.
A: Yeah, that looks good.
C: Whereas with the first two books, you needed glasses to read the damn things, unless you were 18 years old, you know? And there were several other things that I kicked myself for, things I didn’t even think about. Well, trust me, I think about them now! Whereas now, I have a checklist, and I’ll never make those mistakes again.
Also, I designed one of the covers myself. Not for a commercial book, it was for a collection of short stories to make money for the Chipping Norton Literary Festival. And it actually looked pretty decent. Visually, it doesn’t look too bad, but a professional designer knows all about fonts, design, typesetting and colours. The colours on my cover are okay, but they don’t stand out. I think I’m pretty good at cover design, but I will never design a cover myself, or if I do, I’ll get a professional to finish it off once I’ve specified exactly what I want and once I’ve taken in their input. It is expensive but it’s really worth it. The other thing we did is that we priced our books too low. Bruno’s book is priced at £10.99 which is expensive compared to WH Smith or the stuff published by Penguin Random House and the other big publishers. Our initial books were priced at £8.99, and that didn’t make us any money. People are willing to pay more for an independently published book. I suppose they understand that they’ll get something a bit more exciting, a bit more experimental, more interesting than the stuff that’s turned out by the Big Five. So yeah, I’ve made lots of mistakes. If you’re really thinking about doing this I’d be delighted to take you through my checklist of all the things you should absolutely do and not do.
A: Maybe you should publish a blog called Things You Should Not Do.
C: I did! I wrote it months ago and there’s an awful lot of an add to it now. But it’s not all bad. Since then, we’ve done a few things which are pretty exciting. We’ve started a podcast, the Indie Book Club. We’ve done six episodes and I’ve got another two to do this week. We’re aiming to release one every two weeks. So, that’s challenging because when you interview an author, you obviously have to read their book. Actually most of the books I’ve featured are non-fiction books because it’s much more interesting and engaging to talk to someone about a non-fiction book unless you have a really famous author. But as we get better known and we get more followers, that may change. We’re very keen on promoting other independent presses. We also feature an independently published book every month where I either review the book or interview the author or publish a Q &A. It’s so important that independent presses are encouraged and continue to flourish.
But going back to the publishing, it’s difficult. We have decided to spend our investment capital on producing really amazing books on a shoestring budget. We spend most of the money on the cover design, typesetting and the print run and everything else we do in house. Typesetting is not expensive if you send them a complete file that has no errors in it. I’ve never managed to do that. I always spot something and think, oh hell, there’s a typo here, whatever, and I have to go back and get it corrected, and they charge you extra for that. But we’re getting better at it!
A: That’s good to hear. In 2020, as an experiment I put a short story on Amazon KDP just to see what publishing a book was like. I did my own cover and after publishing it I got several messages from my friends telling me about typos.
C: What’s your story called?
A: It’s called Home. It was a fun little experiment and it taught me a lot of things like marketing and production. It was an e-book, no physical copies. I wanted to see how many readers I could reach and look at the stats you get behind the scenes and all of those fun little details. I learned a lot. I learned how hard everything is.
C: It is hard! We do a print run for the UK and print on demand for other markets. Hopefully that will change. If one of our books takes off, we could do distribution deals in other countries. We do digital distribution worldwide with a group called Bookwire who do everything outside of Amazon. On our podcast we have affiliate links to all the books that we mention. So that brings in a little bit of income. We don’t just have Amazon affiliate links, we have links with book shops, too, as we want to support independent bookshops. It’s a really fine line because the sad truth is over 80 % of books are sold through Amazon and you just can’t afford to ignore it.
My niece, the one doing the distribution, she has cracked Amazon. She knows how the keywords work. We use a system called Stison, which sends metadata on all of our books to Nielsen’s, which then disseminates that information to bookshops, and also to BDS, which is the library service, and also to our printers. So, we used to have a distribution deal with Clays and Gardeners, but now our deal is with Hobbs, who distribute all of our physical copies, including the sales on our website. And they interface with Amazon and also with Gardner’s to distribute books.
A: Speaking about distribution, can you get distribution under one of the big publishing houses or chart your own course? What I mean is, can you get distribution under one of the big five, say Penguin or Harper Collins as a distribution route, or do you have to create your own?
C: It’s so interesting you ask because I found out only yesterday — you see I’m learning all the time — that there’s a group called the Independent Alliance, a group of 18 publishers who all distribute through Faber & Faber. Even though our current arrangement with Hobbs is working really well, in fact Hobbs have just been amazing. They’re a family-owned printing group in Southampton and we actually met them at London Book Fair last year and they have really made us feel like a million dollars even though we’re so tiny, but it’s definitely worth exploring. There might be a criteria for membership. They might require a minimum sales number per year. Some of the groups are quite well known. Off the top of my head, it includes Fitzcarraldo and Granta, all independent. I would think that our distribution model is going to be a work in progress always because it’s so expensive. It takes up so much of your profit margin that it’s really worth spending time to get it right.
A: When you get a new author on board with a new book, what is the initial plan for the book? Say what is the print run? How do you decide which book should warrant how many copies?
C: We generally do very small print runs because they’re expensive. It’s much better to have a small print run and sell all the books even though obviously the bigger the print run the cheaper it gets but then you have to pay storage costs. So what you gain on the one hand you actually lose on the other and potentially your losses can be very big. In fact, between you and I, we overprinted our first couple of books by a huge margin, and my garage is now full of books. I have to try and sell them. We’ve got ideas about selling them. I will never pulp a book. Never. I would rather give the damn things away than pulp a book. It was a very expensive mistake. And we’ll never make it twice. So just as for example, we’ve printed 300 copies of Bruno’s books. And we tend to make much more money on ebooks rather than printed copies.
There’s no upfront distribution cost, although of course Amazon takes their bit, but the profit margin on an ebook is higher than on a printed book.
A: I have a friend—a friend of a friend. They also run a family run business, called Box of Stories. It’s a subscription model where a customer gets a box of books a month and there are X number of books or types of books that you can get.
C: That’s such a good idea. Maybe I should get in touch with them.
A: You should because all those books in those boxes were meant to be pulped. The people who receive them go on a journey of discovery, getting to read some of the books that they otherwise would never necessarily consider.
C: I would love to have a look at that.
A: Another idea is that you could use your podcast to give away books.
C: Yeah, absolutely. We haven’t tried that yet as we want a bit more a following. Our following is really tiny at the moment, but I’m sure it’ll grow because we’ve got some really interesting authors coming on. The great podcasters are popular because they have authentic conversations that people want to be part of. I’m so nosy. I love finding out about people so it’s a real pleasure to do. Obviously, it takes time to read the books but other than that, it’s so much fun to do that it really doesn’t feel like work. You asked earlier about our process when we decide to work with a new author. That is far more like work because obviously we sign a contract once we’ve decided to take a book on, and our contracts are very simple, okay? But, I think they’re quite generous to the author as well. We effectively, take 75 % of the net profits of printed books and the author gets 25. And then we go 50-50 on e-books. I think it’s pretty generous. We have a very simple contract, although it does include clauses about original work, and what we would do in the event that anyone sued us for blasphemy or libel, and it protects the author’s copyright. Once we have a contract in place, we then work to edit the book. And we have a lot of input into that process. Only one of the books that have come my way required very little editing. Most books need some editing. So, we edit, we work with the author, we plan on a publication date and we aim to get the books printed at least two or three weeks before publication. For a number of reasons, the books can be late, which is very stressful, especially if you’ve sold pre-orders. There are many reasons why printing could be delayed, but we’re giving ourselves much longer lead times. It’s really important not to be in a hurry. Now, we always give ourselves extra time. If there’s one thing I can guarantee, it’s that whatever time you have disappears really, really quickly.
A: Yeah, I think you mentioned in your blog that you just add an extra month even if you don’t need it. I found that very fascinating and very somehow comforting just to know that there’s a little more extra time there.
C: The first two books we published together: my second novel, All Grown Up and Fireweed. We launched them on the same day. And the reason we did that is because the author is in his 80s and he wanted to launch at the same time I did so that he could be part of the initial launch party. He said, look, I can’t invite too many people to this launch because, you know, all of my friends are dead. I should have either insisted we have separate dates or I should have added at least another two months to the timetable. I’ll never launch two books together again. The other thing I’ll never do again is have a party that’s so expensive that you don’t make the cost up in book sales! I could write a really long list of all the things we’ve done wrong.
A: We’ve touched upon all of this, but once you’ve got the deal down with the author and everything is set up, what does the marketing of the book look like? As a publishing house, what is your role and responsibility where marketing is concerned?
C: We’ve started to do a lot of the PR ourselves. The PR is different for every single book. So, for example, with Bruno’s book, it’s set in Italy, it features classic cars, it features CIA and Mafia. We’ve focused on journalists or bloggers who have an Italian connection, as well as the ones who are simply interested in good fiction. We spend a lot of time optimising our Amazon pages as well, which is a really important process. I didn’t realize how important it was. We’ve also put out blog posts about it. We’ve got a mailing list of about 1,500 people. We’re working hard to grow this number, and we send out a newsletter every month. And overall, your mailing list is way more important than your social media. Social media is important but building your mailing list is the best way to guarantee sales.
A: Yes, I’ve learned that as well.
C: Going back to PR … Annie [Annie David, author of Paradise Undone] is brilliant because she’s a very good PR person in her own right. Some authors are really good at it and they know how to sell their books. Others are terrible and really need a lot of help. We try in our newsletter, for example, every single month to feature every single book. To have something to say about it, so that people don’t forget the books we’ve launched.
A: Have you ever tapped into the whole TikTok side of things?
C: Yes, we have. So, on the social media side, I have turned out to be quite accidentally the face of Inkspot because a lot of the social media posts feature me doing really silly things. My nieces take pictures and make videos of me wearing silly hats playing with the dogs or short clips of something funny. The videos get a huge amount of engagement, but they don’t sell books by themselves. I think the podcast will be different because my niece takes shorts and releases short form videos from the podcast and releases them on all the major platforms. Those get really great engagement, and long term I think those will drive sales.
The Future of Inkspot
A: From a business point of view, because you’re also a writer and on the publishing side, what do you think is one of the key roles that a publisher takes on when they take on a writer and the writer’s work? Is there some longevity to the relationship that you are trying to build with the author or is it just one book and done, let’s move on to the next?
C: Well, that’s a really interesting question. Obviously it’d be really lovely to have a long standing relationship with our authors. I never quite appreciated before I set up the company what a massive responsibility it is to take on somebody’s book. It’s as if they’re putting their life in your hands. Writing a book is such a huge investment in terms of time and energy and as for having a really long-term career with my authors, that would be really nice, but equally I’m perfectly happy to publish just one really amazing book if I never get another one. The book has to stand on its own merit. This is a really personal thing to say, but a number of my authors are a bit elderly. One of them, let’s call him Rick, is 83 years old. He’s going to hate me for telling you that. I’m signing up with another author who’s in her late 70s. And I have another two authors in their 60s, 70s. I don’t think many other publishers are signing up older authors. I have a skewed number of authors who are not in the first flush of youth and yet I don’t care. I really love their books.
A: That’s great. This is a question about your future vision for the company: Are you interested in getting into translated books? Getting books translated into English, I mean?
C: Yes, I would love to do that. We’d be open to translation offers, but for the time being, we really have to stick to our knitting. We have talked about getting Fireweed translated because the author and I both think that there would be a market for it in Germany, as it’s a post-war book about the rebuilding of Hamburg after the bombings. But translations are super expensive, so we’ve decided to focus on our core market until we build up enough demand for that to be successful.
A: While we’re on the subject of other markets, I know that your primary market is the UK. That’s where you do the major printing but outside of UK which countries do you see the most traction from?
C: The US. Probably because Annie is from Colorado, and she’s been featured on a lot of US podcasts, and does a lot of US events. Bruno’s book, I think, will have a very wide appeal in the US because it’s about the CIA, the Mafia, as well as being a coming-of-age story set in Italy. It has a natural appeal to the US market. Although they might not be so delighted to find out how their government behaved in the 70s in Italy, but hey, you know what? The truth hurts!
Advice for Writers (and budding Publishers)
A: If someone were to start a publishing house, what are the things they should be mindful of? What are the key pieces of advice that you would give to someone before they set off on that journey?
C: Well, that’s a good question. Okay, so I would say think very hard about whether you really want to do it because once you get into it, once you have contract with an author and they trust you with their book, it is impossible to step back. Or at least it’s very, very difficult. You should take on that commitment only if you’re really willing to honour it. Jurcell and I have gone into this with a 10-year horizon. We are going to do our absolute damndest for the next ten years. And that was our original agreement. And if it really hasn’t worked out after that time, then we’ll look at it again. It’s not a short-term thing. It’s a really big commitment. Not only in terms of time, money, but also emotion. When you take on someone’s book, you’re really taking on their baby. It’s just like their baby.
A: Amazing.
C: I suppose my biggest piece of advice is that if you are going to go down this road, make sure you only publish books that you love. Don’t compromise on things, just because you think they’ll be popular.
A: Do you have any advice for writers who are approaching publishing houses? What should they be looking out for in a publisher? How do they find a publisher that helps them achieve their goals?
C: The Writers and Artists Yearbook is really helpful in guiding writers to the kind of publishers or agents that they should be targeting. And I would also say follow the guidelines because that’s what they’re there for. Saying that, you also have to be a bit brave. If they’re not accepting submissions for example, maybe send them an email to ask when they’ll be open for submissions. Don’t sit on your hands. You have to have bit of faith in your own work, you know?
A: Yeah. I think “don’t sit on your hands” is advice that I’m going to take.
Are you planning to start a publishing house?
AKSHAY GAJRIA IS A LONDON-BASED WRITER, STORYTELLER AND WRITING COACH. HE HOLDS A MASTERS IN CREATIVE WRITING FROM BIRKBECK, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON AND A B. TECH IN COMPUTERS FROM NMIMS, MUMBAI. HIS WORKS ARE FEATURED IN TAMARIND LITERARY MAGAZINE, SKULLS, HUMAN PARTS, FUTURA MAGAZINE, THE WRITING COOPERATIVE, AND MORE. HIS TRUE STORY “REJECT” WAS FEATURED ON THE MOTH RADIO HOUR AND HE’S TOLD LIVE STORIES ON PLATFORMS LIKE TRUE STORY LONDON, THE STORY COLLIDER AND TALL TALES.