The papers have been kind to us

by Christopher Hamilton-Emery

Five books, nine outlets, one of the best quarters of coverage I can remember in nearly thirty years of publishing. 

I keep a small stack of cuttings on my desk, and this quarter it’s grown taller than I’m used to. Not from one book doing well, but from several at once – which is rarer, and a better sign for the business than any single hit.

Erica Wagner’s Wash has had the broadest run: reviewed in the Guardian, the Observer, the Times, the Financial Times and the Mail on Sunday. A historical novel doing the rounds of five national papers in a matter of weeks is unusual for any publisher, let alone for three of us working out of North Norfolk. Kate Nicholls’ The Maternal Element picked up a notice in the Sunday Times , and Michael Arditti’s The Tribe was reviewed in the TLS – two very different books, both landing with the readers they were written for. David Flusfeder’s Something Might Fall was covered in the Irish Times , and Christiana Spens’ folk-horror novel The Colony has had a warm reception across the Scottish press and beyond. Further down the list, but no less welcome, Bill Broady’s There’s No ‘F’ in Wonderful has just found a kind word in the Yorkshire Times.

It’s a genuine spread – literary fiction, historical fiction, satire, folk horror – and that variety is, I think, the real story. It isn’t one lucky title carrying the quarter; it’s a list that’s working as a list. None of this happens by accident, either, and it’s no coincidence that the same three months produced our strongest sales figures in years.

So my thanks, as ever, to the editors and critics who gave these books their time, and to Kirsty for getting them in front of the right desks in the first place. It’s a good feeling, having more cuttings than I know what to do with.