This is part of a series called Ten Questions in which IS&T talks to small presses. Here, Co-Director of Unthank Books, Robin Jones supplies the answers:
Ten Questions
Name: Unthank Books
DOB: 01/02/2010
Home town: Norwich/London
1.Who is Unthank Books?
Unthank Books is a collection of writers, editors, lecturers, literary consultants, designers, illustrators etc. who share similar reading taste but were finding it difficult to understand the output of the mainstream publishing houses and hence get hold of good books to read.
2. What are your goals as a publisher?
To publish material that we like and firmly believe others will like and are suffering a dearth of. We’re interested in first-efforts and want to develop authors not just discover them.
3. What first brought you to publishing?
Holding a pencil aged four and being encouraged to learn handwriting by copying from the blackboard gorgeous extracts such as ‘quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir’…thence to reading pretentiously and precociously, thence to fifteen years in the salt-mines of London trade publishing.
4. What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
To think big and refuse to stay small in anything but name. To disregard trends, bandwagons and roller-coasters unless there’s an innate love of a particular one.
5. What do you see your press doing that no one else is?
Publishing books that may require concentration and thought, and publishing an ‘Unthology’ of new work once a year.
6. What do you see as the most effective way to get new publications out into the world?
To bang on and on about them to all and sundry with verve, passion and Terminator II-like (the liquid metal one) irrevocability yet remembering unfailingly those who’ve already heard the schpiel.
7. Do you take submissions? If so, what are you looking for?
We do and will always do. We are looking for the real deal. People who can demonstrate some commitment to the written-word by the quality of their output. We’re not much into anything riddled with errors, spelling mistakes, careless grammar, missing punctuation or loose syntax. It is a hard, hard path to write something good and we can usually spot work dashed-off in a spirit of “I’m going to be a writer now”.
8. How hands-on are you as editors?
Pretty much full body massage. We don’t want to for the sake of it, but are prepared to go the whole hog if we believe the underlying idea and construction are worth it.
9. Tell us what you have published this year, and what you are going to publish.
We have just published Touching the Starfish by Ashley Stokes a rip-roaring contemporary literary novel which finds the humour and pathos in the tough old world of Creative Writing. We will publish at the end of the year, an ’Unthology’ of shorter works by seventeen authors all at varying stages of their careers to provide a sample of our taste and to back-up our claims of supporting first-time writers.
10. How do you see the press evolving?
We are aiming to become involved in a little more than just pure books as time goes on, hopefully becoming a bit of a literary beacon as the gloom of dumbing-down descends.