Making Evaluative Judgements and Sometimes Making Money: Independent Publishing in the 21st Century

Abstract

Independent publishing is a sector of the cultural field that is perceived to be threatened by market forces but also one in which is buoyed by critical and commercial success and a rise in the number of small presses. The article innovates by probing the oft-neglected matter of evaluative judgements as publishers, in their role as cultural intermediaries, negotiate aesthetic, ethical, commercial and temporal considerations in deciding which books to publish. Drawing on primary data from a study of independent literary publishers from six countries, I draw attention to how they justify their decisions in order to mark their distinctiveness in the field and distinguish themselves from the corporate houses. I find that field-specific aesthetic judgements assess the extent to which literary manuscripts contribute to the conversation by responding to developments in the field. In contrast, decisions made on this basis of ethical considerations mean that the publishers' output might veer from 'art for art's sake' towards more heteronomous regions of cultural production in order to contribute towards a sense of the common good. Finally, the temporal dimension of evaluative judgements distinguishes independent presses from their rivals by pointing to a distant future of literary fame that reaches far beyond the marketing schedules of the corporate houses.

Amplifying Silenced Voices Through Micro- and Small-Press Publishing

“…Stewart [ 52 ] provides a unique comparison for this research in documenting how 47 independent presses in six countries (including Australia) address the “diversity deficit”: hosting readings specifically for BAME and LGBTQIA groups, those with mental health issues, the homeless; creating screen-reader adaptable books …; and publishing anthologies of poems written by deaf and disabled authors. … offering paid internships to encourage those not able to work for free; inviting younger writers and more women onto editorial boards; … curating literary events whose invitees are not the usual crowd; pushing submissions from BAME groups to the front of the “slush pile”, and openly inviting submissions—on the website platform—from under-represented groups.…”

An Ecosystem Model of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Publisher ‘Tiers’: Publisher Size, Sustainability and Cultural Policy

“…Many of the scholarly accounts are underpinned by a Bourdieusian understanding, in which oppositional and hierarchical understandings of literary production are pre-eminent, and small and independent publishers are perceived and/or rhetorically constructed as autonomous (e.g. [24,25,43]). While such accounts are frequently nuanced (for example, Noël's productive argument for 'independence' as a 'polysemic' term [24: 14]), these scholarly accounts follow the stratifications inherent in the global book business.…”

Curating the Canon: Editorial Decision-Making, Bias and Privilege in Publishing

“…Thirdly, we have contributions to the field -often rooted in sociology -by scholars from both inside and outside the loose discipline of Publishing Studies, who have chosen to include publishing and its editorial functions in their broader investigations (Powell, 1985;Bourdieu, 2008;Thompson, 2010;Stewart, 2018;Ramdarshan Bold, 2015, 2019Greenberg, 2015Greenberg, , 2018O'Brien, 2016;Saha, 2017;Saha and van Lente, 2020). Much of this work focuses on disparities and inequalities in the industry, from Ramdarshan Bold's pioneering work on representation in children's and young adult books to O'Brien's wider focus on the Creative Industries as sites of inequality and classism.…”

“…Another way of framing Bourdieu's 'dual character' is presented by Stewart (2018), in his analysis of taste and curatorial practice of editors at larger independent publishers. Stewart suggests that a 'portfolio approach' is used in list-building: a deliberate policy of commissioning a mix of books, some that are very close to that editor's personal tastes and some that are not -but which make commercial sense for that publisher to take on.…”