Five Years of Publishing Beyond the Mainstream: On Setting Up and Running Renard Press

By Will Dady

An unknown wit of years past asks, "How do you make a small fortune in publishing?" Of course the answer is, "Start with a large one!" 

I’m afraid I have to report that when we set up Renard Press we didn’t have a large fortune, just bags of passion, and somehow that, and stubbornness – and the book community’s kind support – has helped us make it to our first big milestone: five years of making books. We’ve not yet amassed that small fortune – but our bookshelves have grown rich indeed with tales from all corners of the globe. 

Setting up an indie press in April 2020 felt for a while like one of those acts which, viewed one way is a stroke of genius, viewed another is utter madness. In case you missed it, there was a pandemic on, and we were all confined to barracks – but as our first print rep said, "If you can get through this, you can get through anything." 

Despite the isolated nature of those months – years – of Covid, which I’m sure we’re all only too keen to try to forget, it was in some ways a good time to be stepping out in a new and positive light. Somehow we chanced on authors who trusted us with their words before we had a track record; and then readers, who were happy to pay good money for these little paper miracles. 

Over these five years there have of course been some hurdles, speedbumps, calamities – it’s famously difficult to keep a small press running and to achieve some sort of publicity cut-through without the huge budget that the Big Five enjoy, and let’s not even get into the disaster Brexit has wrought on exports and politics, and the turmoil of social media under new ownership. But there have also been such positives – a thriving bookish community, recognition through awards, lasting relationships with book lovers. 

At the end of last year we celebrated our fifth birthday with a wonderful, warm event in St Mary’s Islington, in a by turns hilarious and moving series of author readings, raising the rafters with lines from those first five years of publishing. 

The stats surrounding these years are quite startling. In total in our first half-decade we have published 165 books across our imprints, including 650 (living) writers, published in both single-author books and a shelf-full of anthologies, including many debut authors, and we’ve also planted some 2,500 trees. (Perhaps the last of these sticks out a bit here, but humour us – sustainability is a huge part of what we do).

Of course any press could – and will, in the age of AI – publish 165 crap books, regurgitating stolen words endlessly for the amusement and profit of the smug billionaires whose platforms promote such rot to the detriment of literature and the environment. But I’d like to think that Renard’s books are literary gems, soulful and unique, and each books sits proudly on the shelves in my office, as well as in countless bookshops and homes. There are points when a publisher stands at a crossroads, I think – most will counsel to follow the money; but a big part of what makes us different, in my eyes, is that we’re looking for different, and this means looking beyond the mass of published voices – for stories and writers who have fallen through the cracks, who aren’t flavour of the month, who aren’t seen in the mainstream. And when I talk to our subscribers, who receive a book every month, they talk about the joy of reading books they would never have found otherwise – and this is what keeps me going. "Variety is the soul of pleasure," said groundbreaking seventeenth-century writer and sometimes spy Aphra Behn – words to live by!

So it’s important to us that the list remains a broad church – from the outset we committed to gender equality in our commissioning, opting to avoid becoming another stale, male-dominated list, and I’m proud to see great and natural diversity in the shelves, be that religion, class, sexuality or cultural or ethnic context. Reading is, after all, one of the best ways to explore, to meet people and places we might otherwise not; so, like any diet, it should be varied. 

We celebrated our first five years with that Islington evening event, with crates of beer and a whole lot of authors – but we marked the occasion too with a thoughtful meditation in our Renard Press: Five Years anthology. This is a very special, limited edition of excerpts, which I hope will enchant readers, but also be lovingly preserved on bookshelves of book lovers. It is not designed to sit on a bookshop’s till point – or, indeed, in a nameless distribution city by the M1, ready for the space-going tech bro to peddle for peanuts. Even better, proceeds go to the phenomenal Bookbanks charity, who, by bringing books to foodbanks, are doing the really important work that the National Year of Reading aims for: breaking down barriers of privilege. Our partnerships with charities have been key to our work, and we strongly believe that there’s room for empathy in this big commercialised book world.

So if you’re reading this – thank you! – I hope you now know a bit more about Renard Press, and perhaps even about independent publishing – which, I remain convinced, is the antidote to our times. In an industry that is so busy navel-gazing that sales figures are considered the only important metrics in publishing reportage, how vital, how joyous, then, to be doing something different. Our first five years have been so broad in content and creativity, inspiring  and thought provoking, and we sit on the shoulders of our authors; for our part we shall continue to hold ourselves to account and aim to be a force for good, using our platform to publish beyond the mainstream, bringing together new worlds and voices that no longer have to hide their light. 

About the author
Will Dady grew up in the wonderfully named Great Snoring in North Norfolk, and now lives in London. He is the Publisher at Renard Press, and the founder of the Indie Press Network.

"Small Press Publishing: The Dos and Don'ts"

By Isabelle Kenyon

I started writing Small Press Publishing: The Dos and Don'ts because, when I started publishing anthologies at the end of 2017, there were no books or advice columns out there for new publishers. I contacted every single publisher on the Northern Fiction Alliance page (around 50 UK publishers) and offered to work for free, explaining that I had already taught myself a lot about the business, but now wanted to apply that knowledge to a professional team (in a small press, you often do every single part of the publishing process, but ideally, you have the budget to allocate roles and salaries, so I was intrigued to see how this worked). Unfortunately, only two people replied and they said they didn’t have the capacity to take me on.

This frustrated me because I knew I wasn’t a hindrance to their day-to-day activities – I’ve always worked hard and independently. Instead, I just tried harder to work through the legalities of becoming a sole trader, sorting out a distributor, developing relationships with bookshops, etc., myself. A lot of those publishers now book tables from me for the Northern Publishers’ Fair which I organise!

It’s entirely possible to build your own niche within a busy book market. You have to be organised, determined and have a supportive network, who are passionate about the kinds of books you produce. My network is predominately supportive US readers who I communicate with on social media, and book bloggers who give so much of their time to reviewing my titles (thank you!).

With this book, I wanted to help the many who are never given work experience, by talking them through the steps that I have gone down over the past two years. I’ve also interviewed a series of small publishers in various genres because all publishers run their businesses differently, and I wanted to show those varying models.

There is a lot more to succeeding as a publisher, and as a business, than a good idea. You need to maximise your chances of success. In this book, I take the reader through the process of branding, working with authors, the publishing schedule, marketing and distributing and how I started my business. For example, in one section we look at:


Important questions to ask yourself before you launch your press

What is it about your book or your publishing strategy that encourages customers to choose you? For example, I believe that, for Fly on the Wall Press, it’s the quality of the books and the diverse range of voices, which we represent.

As a publisher, you need a very clear idea about what your books represent and why your publishing niche is important in the industry.

Why do you want to open your own publishing press?

What previous work experience will help you to do this?

What qualifications or training do you have, which will help you with your business endeavour?

Which future training courses do you want to complete in order to develop your business?

Especially on a small press level, you are your own best advocate and if people are interested in your books, it is usually because they are interested in you and what you stand for. To begin selling books, you must be able to sell yourself as a business owner. Have confidence in what you are doing and really define what your press represents.


About the book

Small Publishing: The Dos and Don’ts, by Isabelle Kenyon

Start with a good idea.

Set up your own business.
  
Fill a niche in the publishing industry and turn your hobby into a full-time career.

If you feel passionate that you can fill a niche in the publishing industry, but you haven’t managed to get your lucky break so far, this book is for you.

If you have already started running your own online magazine, small press or are publishing your own work in book form professionally, this book is for you.

With interviews from Indigo Dreams Publishing Ltd, HVTN Press, Louise Walters Books, Newfound Journal, Ghost City Press, Broken Sleep Books, Mason Jar Press, Queen of Swords, Neon Books and more.

The book is available from Fly on the Wall Press here.


About the author

Isabelle Kenyon is a northern poet and the author of This is not a Spectacle, micro chapbook, The Trees Whispered (Origami Poetry Press) and Digging Holes To Another Continent (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York) and Potential (Ghost City Press). She is the editor of Fly on the Wall Press, a socially conscious small press for chapbooks and anthologies. In 2020, she will be published by Indigo Dreams - poetry chapbook Growing Pains - and Wild Pressed Books (short story 'The Town Talks').

​She was shortlisted for the Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize 2019 and for The Word, Lichfield Cathedral Competition 2019. Her poems have been published in poetry anthologies by Indigo Dreams Publishing, Verve Poetry Press, and Hedgehog Poetry Press. She has had poems and articles published internationally.

She will headline at Cheltenham Poetry Festival  2020 and has opened Coventry Cathedral's Plum Line Festival.  She has performed at Leeds International Festival as part of the 2019 'Sex Tapes' and for  Apples and Snakes' 'Deranged Poetesses' 2019.

​She is a fierce dog lover and a confessed caffeine addict.