Neil Griffiths: ‘Mainstream presses are not taking risks’

Photograph by Sophia Evans for The Observer

Neil Griffiths, 60, is the co-founder of Weatherglass Books. As a novelist, he brought out two literary thrillers with Penguin before turning to indie press Dodo Ink for his theological epic As a God Might Be (2017). In 2016 he launched the Republic of Consciousness prize for small presses, now rebranded as the Queen Mary small press fiction prize. The 10 publishers on this year’s longlist include Aaaargh! Press, for Toothpull of St Dunstan, an avant garde historical novel by Kevin Davey, and Honford Star, for Noboru Tsujihara’s Mistress Koharu, about a Tokyo salaryman’s sex doll.

What led you to set up a prize for small presses?

I was having trouble placing my third novel after a miserable experience with Penguin. An editor said: why not try Galley Beggar or Fitzcarraldo? I’d never heard of them – this was just over 10 years ago – even though I’d been reading all my life. I signed up for their subscriptions and found their books extraordinary. At that point I ran a broadcast research agency. I spent a lot of my time talking about media strategies and I was thinking: how do we increase the exposure of these publishers? I remembered the impact of my second novel [Saving Caravaggio, 2006] being shortlisted for the Costa novel prize: a book that had essentially died suddenly sold a load of copies and I was in the literary pages. Prizes make people feel good, and they make life easy for the media and bookshops. Everyone has issues with prizes in the arts but it seemed there were easy wins to be had by galvanising interest. We’ve since awarded small presses about £130,000 and our book club sends out 100 of their books around the world every month.

What’s your definition of a small press?

No more than four full-time staff publishing no more than eight books a year, with a turnover of less than £100,000 and completely financially independent. Fitzcarraldo won twice before they outgrew our rules. I love them, but we’re making sure there’s a place where presses who probably couldn’t submit to any other prize can get noticed. The prize’s ethos is that taking creative risks is a financial risk; if you’re doing that, we want to support you.

Past winners and nominees such as Eley Williams, Missouri Williams and Isabel Waidner are now with corporate publishers. Has indie fiction gone mainstream in the decade since the prize began?

I had a back and forth with Claire-Louise Bennett over moving to Penguin Random House for [her second book] Checkout 19 after Pond. She said she needed the money to write and they had it. A good payday is no bad thing but probably her natural home is a smaller press; she’s now back with Fitzcarraldo. At least six books on this year’s longlist would never find a mainstream publisher. It isn’t just on-trend modernist stuff or regional literature in translation. Mainstream presses are often not taking risks on things that hitherto weren’t risky: quiet midlist writing that would once have been part of their publishing schedule but didn’t sell huge amounts.

Can corporate publishers really be blamed for that?

I don’t want to beat up on the “Big Five” [Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan]. They obviously do still lose money on writers, but the financial crisis of 2008 meant they decided no longer to carry loss leaders that were good for the brand; a book had to earn its keep. The metrics of success for a small press are different. My first book with Penguin sold the same as my book with Dodo Ink, who hadn’t yet published anything when they signed it. Would you rather be paid £50,000 for a two-book deal with the world’s biggest publisher, or would you rather be paid £50 by a publisher who hasn’t published a book? Fifty grand is nice, but you’ve essentially been written off with your first book: you start losing the publisher money. With a small press, you don’t have that advance – you’ll need a job – but selling 1,500 copies is a road to your next book.

How do you envisage the next 10 years of the prize?

Being at Queen Mary [University of London] gives it more stability, which frees up the Republic of Consciousness charity to be impactful in other ways. Publishing is an industry that has grown out of aristocratic amateurism. I’m advocating a ground-zero rethink, which might sound radical, but [even] just tweaking the edges might make a profound difference.

What’s on your wish list for change?

A different vision of writing life would help: a huge advance doesn’t necessarily make you a career writer. And publishers, if your marketing department says, “It’s a good book, but...” don’t bid for it! Small presses who can’t afford big advances get gazumped by publishers who then do nothing [to promote] those books. Then there’s trade: a bookshop’s fiction front table can’t just be the same 36 novels everyone’s read in the hope of leading you to one you haven’t. And finally, customers must pay £14.99 for a paperback. Not £12.99.

Is that the toughest ask?

It might be the easiest. What does it cost to go to the cinema for two hours? How much do you spend on streaming? I think you’d get buy-in if customers thought it would make the industry healthier. Literary culture is in good shape thanks to small presses, but we need support.

What is your own taste in fiction as a reader?

I’m not a hardcore modernist. I’ll never finish Ulysses and I don’t care: bits of it are unreadable! But I always remember that I used to go to lots of free jazz at Cafe OTO [in east London], crazy Scandinavians playing extraordinary music. Their CDs would be lined up on a table afterwards. I don’t like the literary equivalent of Scandinavian free jazz, but there are people who do, and this prize is where they can find it: a metaphorical table on the side of the stage.

The shortlist for the Queen Mary small press fiction prize is announced in mid-March and the winner on 25 March. Neil Griffiths’s new book The Wrong Son is published by Weatherglass Books on 29 May.