To our authors,
Now, more than ever, small, independent presses, such as BSPG, face extreme difficulties and pressing demands.
Our press is now 40 years old, but despite being an established and evolved company, the past few years have been highly challenging, with bookshop sales for our company down by 80%. Getting sales is hard for anyone at the moment, but especially for small presses who value publishing non-commercial work.
The UK is facing a tough cost-of-living crisis and as a small business we have had to make a decision: close the press, or keep going.
Keeping BSPG open to talented un-agented writers, is what we believe in. So, we have decided to keep pushing through and keep things moving forward to the best of our ability.
With our new book, CrimeBits, a crime puzzle book with short fiction judged by best-selling author Lee Child, we hope this is our way to make our beautiful, eccentric, curated and literary, small London press work. CrimeBits is our chance of survival, and we hope you can get behind this as well.
Lee Child, and Val McDermid (who will be judging CrimeBits 2), have sold their books in the millions, but despite their level of popularity, they both are committed to helping BSPG and have donated their names, time, and talents, to judge and edit CrimeBits. We are hoping to create something similar to Murdle, but headed by world-famous crime authors instead.
If we achieve the sales we expect, BSPG will not only survive, but will thrive.
So please, we ask for your patience while we focus on Crimebits. This means a few books scheduled for summer release will be moved to the autumn schedule instead, and some autumn books will move to the winter schedule.
We are so close to a renaissance, but need your support and faith in this interim, fragile period. The success of CrimeBits will allow us to dedicate more time and money when we come to publish your book.
All we want is to give every book the time, consideration, and attention they each deserve. So please, just know, we are always thinking of the bigger picture and all of our authors, trying to build the best future in which everyone’s books can be published. Come 2025, we believe we will have a bigger team, more editors and a redoubled pace of publishing.
We also have a second promising book, Taylor Swift: The Story of Us - A Swiftie's Journey Through Her Eras which is an incredibly special book that we are excited to publish. If the buying power of one of the world's biggest fandoms is a sign that we expect this book to do well, we hope you will support this book too.
So what do we need from you, our authors? Time and patience. Please also support all of our titles; buy the books, share reviews and post on socials.
Stick with us, and by the end of summer, things will have turned a corner.
Thank you so much!
The BSPG Team