stefan tobler

and other stories, founder

For this month’s featured press spotlight I met up with translator & founder of indie publishing powerhouse And Other Stories, Stefan Tobler, ahead of his & AOS author Lutz Seiler’s NCLA event in Newcastle this week.

“It depends on what literature is for you, doesn’t it? And if literature is simply entertainment, then it doesn't matter. But if literature is also an art form, then it does matter. It seems as though indies are trying to publish the best books, however difficult they might be to find a place for.”

James: First of all, can you tell me a little about your background and your entry into the book industry?​

​Stefan: YEAH, I WAS A TRANSLATOR, AND I WAS CHAFING AT THE BIT A BIT, BECAUSE THE AUTHORS THAT I WAS READING, THAT WERE THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY WRITERS THAT I WAS FINDING IN PORTUGUESE, FROM BRAZIL, OR IN GERMAN, WEREN’T - WHEN I WAS SUGGESTING THEM TO PUBLISHERS LIKE SERPENT'S TALE AND HAMISH HAMILTON - WEREN'T BEING TAKEN UP BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T ACTUALLY QUITE COMMERCIAL ENOUGH FOR THEM. THEY DIDN'T THINK THAT THEY COULD MANAGE TO SELL QUITE AS MANY COPIES AS THEY HOPED. 

AND THAT, I THINK, WAS A BIT OF A LIGHTBULB MOMENT AND MADE ME REALISE THAT THERE WAS SPACE FOR PUBLISHERS WHO, IN BRITAIN, COULD BE REALLY FOCUSING ON CHOOSING BOOKS BY THE LITERARY QUALITY AND TRUSTING THAT READERS WOULD COME ALONG. AND SO THAT WAS THE START. IT WAS A POSITION OF IGNORANCE, WHICH WAS, YOU KNOW, PROBABLY NECESSARY. IF I HAD KNOWN THE DIFFICULTIES FINANCIALLY OF [PUBLISHING] ANY LITERARY FICTION, THEN I'M SURE I WOULDN'T HAVE GOT IT GOING. BUT THERE SEEMED TO BE A NEED 10 YEARS AGO FOR MORE TRANSLATION, PARTICULARLY, AND FOR SOME REALLY INTERESTING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE WRITING TO FIND A PUBLISHER.

IT WAS THE 2008-2010 CREDIT CRUNCH AND PEOPLE, LIKE NOW, WERE GETTING VERY JITTERY ABOUT FINANCES. AND THAT'S HOW WHEN WE STARTED, DEBORAH LEVY'S SWIMMING HOME WAS ONE OF THE FIRST BOOKS BROUGHT TO US. DEBORAH CAME TO A PARTY WE THREW TO LAUNCH THE PRESS; THE GUEST OF HONOUR WAS CARLOS GAMERRO, AN ARGENTINE WRITER WHO WAS IN TOWN. A COUPLE OF HIS BOOKS WERE EARLY BOOKS OF OURS. AND DEBORAH WAS ONE OF THE PEOPLE WE INVITED. SHE LIKED THE VIBE AND SHE TOOK A CHANCE WITH US. AND BECAUSE OTHER LARGER PUBLISHERS HADN'T BEEN WILLING TO.

J: What would a typical day at AOS look like for you?

S: Well, in a way, I'm the person within And Other Stories who doesn't really have a typical day. As a small team, we have a UK publicist, so his role is fairly defined; we have someone part-time who works on meta-data updates, production scheduling and production work; and we have someone who is a sales assistant. And also works in social media. She also covers subscription management - she does quite a few different things. And Tara, my wife, who edits for And Other Stories.

But really, if it doesn't fall into any of those roles then it's largely things that I'll be doing, which can be a bit of everything. And that can range from, say, this morning coming up on the train reading potential acquisitions, reading things that have been sent to us as books that we might be interested in. This is always a nice reason to travel by train because I can't access my emails very well, so I can actually read.

​But, you know, other days it will be working on bookkeeping, or with a bookkeeper, or it will be working on Arts Council reports, or it will be preparing for our advisory board meeting, or 101 other things, really.

​J: Coming into publishing as a translator first, do you think it helped shape your perception of the industry?

S: I think it was good because, in a way, the people I knew were other translators, and so that brought a lot of really interesting ideas for books. Also, just being able to read other languages has meant I've been able to have a look at something myself, rather than base my decision on a report by someone else, possibly a translator I don't know so well.

​J: You’ve recently worked with Luts Seiler on translating and publishing Pitch and Glint, released this September. How do you find working on both sides of that collaboration?

S: That has been a real joy because, as well as translating the poetry, sort of in bits and pieces within the odd hours here and there on Saturday mornings for a few years, when the novel, Star 111, and the essays, A Place of Loss, were needed to be edited, I could edit them. Working on all three books together has just been brilliant because he does have topics that come up and he comes back to, but in very different ways than the poetry or the novel or the essays, and just being able to bring those together so that they work well together has been really fun.

J: Do you have a preference between operating as a translator or a publisher who can see the full picture?

S: I love translation but I don't think I would enjoy spending all my time translating. I do enjoy the opportunity to work in a wider, creative way around a text. That also includes things like the design of the books and all the editing. ​

J: Am I right in thinking AOS is part-funded by its reader subscriptions? To what extent do you think it’s necessary to allow your supporters a voice in deciding which titles get selected?

S: That was definitely the idea, yeah. In the beginning, the subscriptions were clearly helping to fund us. The thing is, postage costs have gone up massively and also because we have such a large number of subscribers now, we can’t do it in-house. We get a mail-out company to do it. So I'm sort of at the point where I need to go back and do the maths again. It's a toss-up. I mean, it's really incredible to have people who are subscribing in advance and trusting you to choose the books, that are going to surprise them in a good way. We definitely want to keep it going, but I think we need to try and find a way to not let it get too expensive because of rising postal costs.

It's also proving more of a challenge. We started out, on our first website, we invited people to subscribe to six of our books in advance. Whoever hadn't received that in advance, we invited them to buy the books once they were published from a bookshop. And then when we had a new website, we were sort of persuaded to start selling books directly. But actually, we've realised that we don't want to do that. We do want to send people to bookshops. The subscription is a bit different. You send out a thousand books all at once. And we do think it's an extra sale compared to bookshop sales because it's like a subscription for someone who doesn't know what they're getting. But if people are buying individual books, we have decided that we want people to get into bookshops. We're not a great fulfilment centre.
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​Bookshops are there, and we'd rather have people supporting them. So we're in the process of changing our website so that we will take off the buy buttons and be directing people to bookshops.

J: So, I suppose your reading groups are on the opposite end of that spectrum, in asking people to read two or three books per season [in their original form] and then contribute feedback to help decide which books get published. Is that right? ​

S: Definitely. It's a way of keeping the doors open to suggestions for books that might not be at the top of a foreign publisher or agent's pitch. They're really great books. So translators bring them to the board, we discuss them, and it leads to us finding great books to publish.

J: So, let's say you start with the reading group, rounding down to a certain number of choices, get it approved, translated, and then onto bookshelves. How long does that process typically take?

S: Oh, it can take several years. I mean, even now, I've just finished reading a Brazilian book that was sent to us at the beginning of last year, that I hadn't had a chance to read. And so now that'll be something we can consider. If we do take it forward, it's certainly a good book, it'll be another couple of years before it comes out. You really need a year for the translation process, and then you'll be able to have it edited and ready to send out to the press.

J: With such a strong focus on bringing international writing to an English-speaking audience, what impact did Brexit have on that process for you?

S: It's an interesting one. Direct sales is the only hard bit, really. We have a lot of subscribers and a lot of people who buy individual books from us in Europe. That's the part that didn't work very well when Brexit happened; we lost a lot of European subscribers. We now have a workaround so that people in Europe will get their books from Ireland rather than the UK. That's actually working fine now once we sorted that out. Luckily, it's quite easy for shops in Europe to buy books from Britain, it's a different system so hasn't really affected shop sales. ​

J: In this current climate of rising costs, postage, and distribution, especially off the back of the pandemic, what has And Other Stories done to combat these pressures?

S: Printing is absolutely shocking. What’s particularly difficult is if you get a book that you just need a little top-up run because it goes out of stock. I fear there are going to be more books that will end up as low-quality, print-on-demand [editions] because publishers can't afford the top-up print of 300 copies. Because the unit cost is so high and there's no margin, you're losing money. 

​So what we did do, really, is we had a think about it. We've been experimenting the last few years, and we're doing some books as hardbacks, but hardbacks are also having a tough time in bookshops. So rather than give someone a £20 hardback, we're skipping the hardback, and we're just making absolutely beautiful trade paperbacks with flaps. So it's not your sort of cheap paperback, it's an in-between, between a hardback and a cheap paperback. At a price point that is higher than the paperback and lower than the hardback, you get something absolutely beautiful, a really nice paper. And that will mean more money for the author than the standard paperback.

​It's a bit of a challenge for us because we've gone with some really, really lovely cover card stock, which is a lovely tactile paper made by a paper mill in the Lake District called James Cropper, who’s a sponsor of the Wainwright Prize. And it's gorgeous stuff, and it's really, really good for sustainability reasons. But it's not cheap.

J: This takes me to the next question, which is about the upcoming cover revamp. It sounds like another international collaboration. So there's a designer from Brazil and then you've found a font from the Netherlands, is that right? Can you tell us a little bit about that? ​

S: Yeah, well, it's been sort of a year-long process trying to get this right. We wanted a design that was contemporary but also something of a classic look to stand the test of time. Something we wouldn't have to change for a very long time, for decades, really. And that's a big ask.. Elisa [von Randow] was someone we'd worked with on a few covers; she’d already done the Brazilian editions of Juan Pablo Villalobos's books, which we liked so much that we started using [in the UK]. And we just really loved what she came up with.

J: You've been mentioned in a recent article about ‘indie publishing mavericks’, which has been getting a lot of traction, where it discusses indies' willingness to take on seemingly less commercial choices in order to push boundaries. Do you think that's an important stance to take, especially in the face of such a risky climate?

S: Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on what literature is for you, doesn’t it? And if literature is simply entertainment, then it doesn't matter. But if literature is also an art form, then it does matter. It seems as though indies are trying to publish the best books, however difficult they might be to find a place for.

J: Do you think that indies are changing the larger publishing landscape?

S: I think indies are doing their own thing. I don't think they're too bothered about what the big people are doing, I think they’re just publishing the things that they think are really interesting. And there's a whole bunch of indie publishers now. It's quite a change.

J: Since moving north and into Sheffield, do you feel like you're faced a North-South divide within the publishing world? ​

​S: Well, it's interesting. I mean, it was interesting that in that article, all the photos happened to be of publishers based in London. I thought that was interesting. It feels like sometimes it does get a bit easier if you're in London.

On the other hand, as far as Arts Council funding, London publishers are finding it difficult because the Arts Council has a mandate to change where they fund. However, being based in Sheffield, we sort of fall between the stalls because the current Arts Council focuses on what they call priority places. So if we had had our office in Barnsley or in Doncaster, just down the road from Sheffield, we would have been in a priority place, but in Sheffield, we weren't. Does being in Sheffield mean we can't adequately serve the same writers who are coming from Barnsley or Doncaster? It doesn't seem that that's the case.

​But there are all sorts of different sides to the North-South and regional pros and cons. I just think it's really nice that we and other publishers are not in London or the South-East, because if you're in a different place you see different things, you meet different people.

J: Could you tell me about The Northern Writers Award?

S: Yeah, it's something we did for a few years. and we haven't continued just because there was so much reading of submissions that we were failing to keep up with the other reading we were supposed to do. 

The first winner was Amy Arnold, and Slip of a Fish is one of those books that is about a really quite hard mother-daughter relationship, at the centre of it, which is quite shocking, When Tara was reading the book as a judge, she threw it across the room. In fact, I think it was her iPad that she threw across the room. But she realised that the strength of the reaction was partly the strength of the book and that it's just incredibly beautiful, the writing is in incredibly beautiful rhythms.

​I think it was a vindication for the northern Prize because Amy didn't have an agent, you know, she sent it to us, and as well as this prize it was then shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, and she has another novel out now with Prototype.

J: So, back to bookshops then. It’s great to see that And Other Stories has a Bookshop of the Month feature. What part do you think indie bookshops play in the world of indie publishing?

S: I mean, it's, uh... Not to get incredibly superlative here. But I mean, as far as I can see, we would be, as a publisher, and other independent publishers of literary fiction, would be much better off if, aside from some of the larger Waterstones that have a really quite impressive selection and shops, if Waterstones, on the whole, was a lot smaller and those spaces were occupied instead by independent shops. Because we see that independent shops have career booksellers who are dedicated readers. They're really championing the books they love and we know many of our books have done a lot better through independent bookshops. So, yeah, impressive. We're always willing to talk to independent bookshops and be in touch.

J: OK, last couple of quick-fire questions. What's your favourite And Other Stories title?

S: That's like asking a parent, which is your favourite kid? That's absolutely... I'm absolutely not going to come out with it.

J: Fair enough… But if you had to pick one?

S: I will mention since we're talking here in Newcastle, one book that we published last year by a Newcastle writer and one that we'll publish next year.

Aftermath by Preti Taneja is just an absolutely incredible book. It takes as its starting point a very traumatic experience, but it is a book which you just dive into and you learn so much and you feel so much. Yeah, so there's that one.

​And then next year, Newcastle writer Manya Wilkinson's book, Lublin, comes out with us. Their first novel came out over 30 years ago with Serpent's Tale, but this is definitely just the start of a really great career that she's going to have, back in fiction writing. I mean, it's just so... sorry, I don't want to get too sales pitchy, but I mean, it's about three Jewish lads who have been sent off to a market town called Lublin, supposedly where all their dreams are going to come true, where there's this revolution for, a sort of thirst for knowledge or of financial mercantile success. And unfortunately, they've been given a dud map. It's a bit of a Waiting For Godot but with more rude jokes.​

J: Right, last question. This might be almost as difficult to answer, but do you have a favourite bookshop?

S: Oh, again, I can’t say that… Well, I do have so many favourite bookshops.

One of them was a bookshop that no longer exists but was in the States. My mother-in-law used to live in Austin, Texas, and there was a bookshop called Malvern Books, and I bought their t-shirt, and on the back, it says, ‘We Don't Sell Crap’. And they basically had pretty much only independently published books in there. It’s now become a new bookshop, which is of a similar focus. 
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In the UK, I feel like the new bookshop in Birmingham, Voce Books, is doing something similar. And I'm really excited about their space and how they are supporting independent publishing, but also really supporting the history of Birmingham writing, putting on symposiums and talks about forgotten Birmingham writers. There's some really exciting stuff going on. So, there's an international and local focus.

head to and other stories to see what exciting new titles they have in store for the end of the year and 2024.

if you liked the sound of any of the books mentioned above then head to orders to request your copy.

"We see that independent shops have career booksellers who are dedicated readers. They're really championing the books they love and we know many of our books have done a lot better through independent bookshops.”

Stefan Tobler - and other stories