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Isabelle KenyonFLY ON THE WALL Press, FOUNDER & managing directorFor May's Featured Press Spotlight we caught up with Manchester based writer & managing director, Isabelle Kenyon, their small yet pioneering press’ genre-defying anthologies and political fiction, as well as their work with the Northern Fiction Alliance, the Northern Publishers Fair, and more.
Finalist in the Manchester People’s Cultural Awards and Regional Winner of Small Press of the Year, British Book Awards 2024, Fly On The Wall Press are making waves across the U.K. and onto the shelves of your favourite bookshops. I wanted to work with other writers... I was just starting to share my work with people online and then going to open mics. That was new for me. I wanted to do a collaborative project with other people because there was such a network of people on Twitter who connected on Goodreads and reviewed each other's work internationally. And I thought, ‘Wouldn't it be lovely to have this?’ |
JR: I was hoping we could dive straight in. If you could give us a little bit of an introduction to yourself, and what Fly On The Wall Press is all about, we'll take it from there.
IK: Sounds good. So, yeah, hello. I'm Isabelle Kenyon, and I'm based in Manchester. I'm a writer and a publisher. And Fly On The Wall Press started in 2018. Since then, we've been publishing cross-genre anthologies, fiction, and poetry, which has something to say about society, has some sort of social message in there, or perhaps tackle the pressing issues of our time, but with nuance. I would say we're not didactic. We're still accessible. We want there to be a way that people can talk to us, as well as being an indie press. We want there to be that back and forth so that people can come to us to talk about publishing or ask what goes on behind the scenes, and equally so that authors can have a bit more knowledge about what they're signing up to.
I think sometimes the publishing industry is not very good at talking about what happens between someone writing a book on their laptop, and then, you know, getting a publisher and getting an agent, and it getting turned into a book. So we do a lot of work demystifying that as well, workshops and events.
JR: Did I read somewhere that it all started with you producing charity anthologies?
IK: So, we did two in 2018. Mind was Please Hear What I'm Not Saying, which was an anthology of 116 poets. Then later that year in October, we published Persona Non Grata, which was about social exclusion, homelessness and refugee displacement. And that was for Shelter and Crisis Aid UK. So we had two charities for that one. And because the social exclusion, you know, covered more than one theme, more than one charity. And then in 2019, we started publishing individual writers.
We had like five big bases in 2018, and of these, were open to international submissions. We had, like, over 1000 people who submitted their work to us in the first year. And that just meant that as soon as we opened for individual books, we had a really large database of people. This created a problem, not a creative problem, but that we had to have international distribution immediately because we'd not restricted it. But I think it's probably by having difficulty in the beginning and [having] worked everything out, that we figured out how to do that long term.
JR: And am I right in thinking that you were brought on as an individual to produce those anthologies, and then they formed the foundation of what later became Fly On The Wall, is that right?
IK: Yeah, so I was just literally a writer who joined social media, had a blog which was called Fly On the Wall Poetry, and that same website is now Fly On The Wall Press. It was just an idea that I wanted to work with other writers. I joined Twitter back in the day, 2017, end of, and you know, I was just starting to share my work with people online and then going to open mics. That was new for me. I wanted to do a collaborative project with other people because there was such a network of people on Twitter who connected on Goodreads and reviewed each other's work internationally. And I thought, ‘Wouldn't it be lovely to have this?’
And at the time, there weren't many mental health anthologies out there. I think the discussion of mental health has become a lot better over the last few years. There are loads of mental health anthologies, which I can mention now, but at the time, there weren't. I thought, mental health is the topic that everyone is going to be able to relate to, and will probably be inclined to write on. And yeah, it kind of just blew up on the submission forums that you get on Facebook, and writing competition websites, and people saw the call out and submitted. And that's how we became a publisher. In that, you know, we used Print On Demand in the first year. And people wanted to write for a charity. And you'll sort of see charity anthologies don't necessarily need a publisher. If you've got a collaborative spirit. But yes, I did sort of project manage it all as a publisher.
But in any anthology, there are collaborative elements. You edit collaboratively with the writer. And then I had people around me who were knowledgeable about graphic design and things like that and could help me. And then the rest is all YouTube videos to figure out what I was doing.
JR: That's so funny. I mean, I guess that's the next big question, isn't it? When you're doing everything yourself, where do you start? Where do you search out for this sort of information? Trying to publish anything is tricky. And I think you've you've highlighted that it's one big collaboration. It’s very difficult to do it solo.
Now that you're a good few years in, is it still very much a collaborative act now? Have you got more people, more regular collaborators? Are you still reaching out to new people? How does that usually work?
IK: Well, we are still just one person but I often have interns. From July this year, we'll have one of my interns become a part-time employee, one to two days a week in between studies. I’m really excited to have her back. At the moment we have an intern from the uni, but sometimes it's easier to be one, in terms of the management, you know. The internship is more like training which is useful but requires a long period of training and it's that internal problem for publishers when hiring; you want someone more knowledgeable than yourself but at the income that you can get them at. There's not going to be someone who knows more than you who’s going to be entry-level. that's the internal problem for publishers in the north, and down south even, I'm sure. But yeah, just myself.
At the moment we have an open call for submissions every year. This year, it's from May to the end of July and that allows anyone, regardless of if they have an agent, to submit to us. We’re signing more and more people through agents. I've got a specific agent I really like, The North Agency, and he sort of gets what we do and that's going to mean we have really exciting novels for 2025. I really like working with him but historically, it's not at all necessary that someone has an agent. Some agents are still sometimes slightly snobby about short story collections, and things like that, or even novellas.
There’s a lot that I do myself, but elements like the launch of a book, you know, I physically need the author to be there to talk about the book, and the willingness to travel, as well as a presence on social media. A lot of the work at the moment is to show an author who’s not on social media how to be on it, because if I'm booking them for festivals the festival organisers want to know what kind of audience can be expected. How many books are we ordering? How many signups there's going to be, or whether that author is going to be popular, and even if they're an author of previous books when you're with an indie it's still necessary to be on social media. I have a freelance social media course I tend to give them and say, you know, ‘Check this out, set yourself up’, on certain things, it's just really helpful. We have elements like Substack, as well. That’s actually getting really popular, it’s sort of becoming another income stream, as if it was a book. It’s as substantial as that, which is really interesting.
JR: How important has being based in Manchester been for the press and how has the community of Manchester helped shape what you've become now?
IK: I've always lived around Manchester because I'm from New Mills, just half an hour on the train. So Manchester has always been my city and I've always loved it. I always used to come to the theatre here and look up to all the festivals. So I knew how the ecosystem of literature and the arts works here and what the people in that space are like. There's definitely a kind of spirit in Manchester of publishing and the arts that do work together collaboratively and has a kind of community spirit.
I am lucky to have the bookshops around us, because, we've got four, well, five if you count, Trafford Centre but it's really far out, probably more than that. But you know, two Waterstones, Blackwells and House of Books and Friends, are the ones that we collaborate with the most and I can walk to all of those. Further afield, I can't, and I don't drive, so. But we have loads of bookshops that we love but they're always very supportive, you know, if I email them and say, ‘Well, I haven't really noticed our books on your shelves for a while’, they go, ‘Oh, let's get some in then!’, you know. I can contact them and say, ‘Can we have an event?’
I feel like they read our books and people like to support regional publishing and voices. And so there's an element of that. We've also, because Manchester is the City of Literature, there's no funding attached to that but we do have collaborative meetings where we sort of meet and talk about what's going on. And so there is a network. The massive library as well, you know, and they're a massive support. And I feel like there's just a bit more funding for literature in Manchester because of all those elements and slowly, you know, you can get more involved with them. And so hopefully we might do something with the literature festival this year. And you never know, they've been around so long, these institutions in Manchester, like the Portico library as well, and bit by bit, you get to know them all and do more with them and sort of benefit from that experience and the audiences that they've grown as well. So I think it is perhaps easier to grow in Manchester than it might be somewhere, more remote.
IK: Sounds good. So, yeah, hello. I'm Isabelle Kenyon, and I'm based in Manchester. I'm a writer and a publisher. And Fly On The Wall Press started in 2018. Since then, we've been publishing cross-genre anthologies, fiction, and poetry, which has something to say about society, has some sort of social message in there, or perhaps tackle the pressing issues of our time, but with nuance. I would say we're not didactic. We're still accessible. We want there to be a way that people can talk to us, as well as being an indie press. We want there to be that back and forth so that people can come to us to talk about publishing or ask what goes on behind the scenes, and equally so that authors can have a bit more knowledge about what they're signing up to.
I think sometimes the publishing industry is not very good at talking about what happens between someone writing a book on their laptop, and then, you know, getting a publisher and getting an agent, and it getting turned into a book. So we do a lot of work demystifying that as well, workshops and events.
JR: Did I read somewhere that it all started with you producing charity anthologies?
IK: So, we did two in 2018. Mind was Please Hear What I'm Not Saying, which was an anthology of 116 poets. Then later that year in October, we published Persona Non Grata, which was about social exclusion, homelessness and refugee displacement. And that was for Shelter and Crisis Aid UK. So we had two charities for that one. And because the social exclusion, you know, covered more than one theme, more than one charity. And then in 2019, we started publishing individual writers.
We had like five big bases in 2018, and of these, were open to international submissions. We had, like, over 1000 people who submitted their work to us in the first year. And that just meant that as soon as we opened for individual books, we had a really large database of people. This created a problem, not a creative problem, but that we had to have international distribution immediately because we'd not restricted it. But I think it's probably by having difficulty in the beginning and [having] worked everything out, that we figured out how to do that long term.
JR: And am I right in thinking that you were brought on as an individual to produce those anthologies, and then they formed the foundation of what later became Fly On The Wall, is that right?
IK: Yeah, so I was just literally a writer who joined social media, had a blog which was called Fly On the Wall Poetry, and that same website is now Fly On The Wall Press. It was just an idea that I wanted to work with other writers. I joined Twitter back in the day, 2017, end of, and you know, I was just starting to share my work with people online and then going to open mics. That was new for me. I wanted to do a collaborative project with other people because there was such a network of people on Twitter who connected on Goodreads and reviewed each other's work internationally. And I thought, ‘Wouldn't it be lovely to have this?’
And at the time, there weren't many mental health anthologies out there. I think the discussion of mental health has become a lot better over the last few years. There are loads of mental health anthologies, which I can mention now, but at the time, there weren't. I thought, mental health is the topic that everyone is going to be able to relate to, and will probably be inclined to write on. And yeah, it kind of just blew up on the submission forums that you get on Facebook, and writing competition websites, and people saw the call out and submitted. And that's how we became a publisher. In that, you know, we used Print On Demand in the first year. And people wanted to write for a charity. And you'll sort of see charity anthologies don't necessarily need a publisher. If you've got a collaborative spirit. But yes, I did sort of project manage it all as a publisher.
But in any anthology, there are collaborative elements. You edit collaboratively with the writer. And then I had people around me who were knowledgeable about graphic design and things like that and could help me. And then the rest is all YouTube videos to figure out what I was doing.
JR: That's so funny. I mean, I guess that's the next big question, isn't it? When you're doing everything yourself, where do you start? Where do you search out for this sort of information? Trying to publish anything is tricky. And I think you've you've highlighted that it's one big collaboration. It’s very difficult to do it solo.
Now that you're a good few years in, is it still very much a collaborative act now? Have you got more people, more regular collaborators? Are you still reaching out to new people? How does that usually work?
IK: Well, we are still just one person but I often have interns. From July this year, we'll have one of my interns become a part-time employee, one to two days a week in between studies. I’m really excited to have her back. At the moment we have an intern from the uni, but sometimes it's easier to be one, in terms of the management, you know. The internship is more like training which is useful but requires a long period of training and it's that internal problem for publishers when hiring; you want someone more knowledgeable than yourself but at the income that you can get them at. There's not going to be someone who knows more than you who’s going to be entry-level. that's the internal problem for publishers in the north, and down south even, I'm sure. But yeah, just myself.
At the moment we have an open call for submissions every year. This year, it's from May to the end of July and that allows anyone, regardless of if they have an agent, to submit to us. We’re signing more and more people through agents. I've got a specific agent I really like, The North Agency, and he sort of gets what we do and that's going to mean we have really exciting novels for 2025. I really like working with him but historically, it's not at all necessary that someone has an agent. Some agents are still sometimes slightly snobby about short story collections, and things like that, or even novellas.
There’s a lot that I do myself, but elements like the launch of a book, you know, I physically need the author to be there to talk about the book, and the willingness to travel, as well as a presence on social media. A lot of the work at the moment is to show an author who’s not on social media how to be on it, because if I'm booking them for festivals the festival organisers want to know what kind of audience can be expected. How many books are we ordering? How many signups there's going to be, or whether that author is going to be popular, and even if they're an author of previous books when you're with an indie it's still necessary to be on social media. I have a freelance social media course I tend to give them and say, you know, ‘Check this out, set yourself up’, on certain things, it's just really helpful. We have elements like Substack, as well. That’s actually getting really popular, it’s sort of becoming another income stream, as if it was a book. It’s as substantial as that, which is really interesting.
JR: How important has being based in Manchester been for the press and how has the community of Manchester helped shape what you've become now?
IK: I've always lived around Manchester because I'm from New Mills, just half an hour on the train. So Manchester has always been my city and I've always loved it. I always used to come to the theatre here and look up to all the festivals. So I knew how the ecosystem of literature and the arts works here and what the people in that space are like. There's definitely a kind of spirit in Manchester of publishing and the arts that do work together collaboratively and has a kind of community spirit.
I am lucky to have the bookshops around us, because, we've got four, well, five if you count, Trafford Centre but it's really far out, probably more than that. But you know, two Waterstones, Blackwells and House of Books and Friends, are the ones that we collaborate with the most and I can walk to all of those. Further afield, I can't, and I don't drive, so. But we have loads of bookshops that we love but they're always very supportive, you know, if I email them and say, ‘Well, I haven't really noticed our books on your shelves for a while’, they go, ‘Oh, let's get some in then!’, you know. I can contact them and say, ‘Can we have an event?’
I feel like they read our books and people like to support regional publishing and voices. And so there's an element of that. We've also, because Manchester is the City of Literature, there's no funding attached to that but we do have collaborative meetings where we sort of meet and talk about what's going on. And so there is a network. The massive library as well, you know, and they're a massive support. And I feel like there's just a bit more funding for literature in Manchester because of all those elements and slowly, you know, you can get more involved with them. And so hopefully we might do something with the literature festival this year. And you never know, they've been around so long, these institutions in Manchester, like the Portico library as well, and bit by bit, you get to know them all and do more with them and sort of benefit from that experience and the audiences that they've grown as well. So I think it is perhaps easier to grow in Manchester than it might be somewhere, more remote.
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JR: I know you've been very vocally a strong advocate for the North, and we'll come back to the Northern Fiction Alliance a little later, but getting recognition for the North is fantastic. Obviously, you've had an awful lot of recognition for yourselves lately, as Winner of the Small Press of the Year, with the British Book Awards this year.
What are your thoughts on book awards? Obviously, it is great to get recognition for the hard work you're putting in, but do you think awards help small presses like yourselves? IK: It's a difficult one. The British Book Awards is my favourite because they ask you to define quality yourself. So not them saying what they think quality is, they say, ‘You define it and then tell us if you've achieved it’. And for me, that was super useful because, in the North, people who were applying for that award have been around since the 80s. And I can't compete with that. So if we were all on the same, if they said, ‘Oh, it's only about the revenue’, then obviously I'm not going to be named the winner, because our revenue is never going to be the same. So that's what I loved about it. And that's meant that we've been a finalist for four years, and the number one, in the fifth year, which is brilliant. You don't get anything. It's the Book Awards. I haven't seen awards like that help the smaller presses aside from the now-closed Costa Awards, which The Mermaid of Black Conch won, which was Peepal Tree Press in Sheffield. |
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So I saw that help them, but then it was sold to Penguin and then the award closed. And I don't know, but I wonder if, you know, they decided they didn't sell enough because it was a small press. And the problem is even if you win, you may not have the advertising budget to help that prize and help the book fly.
So the winners that you'll see like Penguin, Bloomsbury, Hachette, you know, if they win a prize, they can heavily go to town on that. You know, they could do new covers, they can do talks, they can put a lot of ad spending, billboards, whatever it may be, and donate to schools, you know, all this awareness. Which if an indie wins, they're like, ‘Great, it's going to pay my bills!’ The priorities are different, and where the money would go is different.
And also mostly, unless there's some sort of discussion with the author, the money would go to the author. And then, the publisher makes the book sales money. So it's great for the author if they win 10k or whatever, but then you have to hope that maybe the publisher will get that in book sales. They might not. I think prizes are valuable in some way but for example, the Man Booker, which I think is probably one of the ones that the indies do best in because they like the literary, they like the sort of weird and different. It has been sort of criticised recently because the books are not selling very well. People are saying, you know, the sort of common reader who does not want to read the Man Booker Prize list. And year on year, the Man Booker prize shortlist books are selling less in bookshops, and they're getting more returns and the prize is not getting as much money back. And perhaps, you know, that's not that bad. Maybe they're just championing stories, which are a little bit different. And maybe it's a good thing to offer people diverse narratives. And maybe eventually they'll come around to it. Or at least we could just give those kind of books a chance. And I guess the other side is, you know, maybe like the judges are just a bit removed from what people actually want. I don't know, I know the International Man Booker is much better for indie visibility with translation. I've seen a lot of indies on that this year. But yeah, I mean, we would love to get to the shortlist or something of a book prize. We've not got there with novels. And I often just wonder whether they just read Penguin or, you know, they don't look at indie. I often wonder what goes on in those selection processes, because they just always seem to be the same people that win. So I'm kind of conflicted. I assume I would like them if we got somewhere close!
JR: Yeah, well, this is the problem isn't it? Who knows what kind of ripple effect that has on small presses? I mean in my experience you get a handful of people, maybe, interested in reading the Booker shortlist and very few people who try to make it through a longlist. And I guess if the publishers decide to slap a Booker Winner sticker on it, then it might draw a few more people in. But I don't know, I think they can be quite divisive. And I think it can split your audience a bit.
IK: Yeah, that's interesting. Something with the prize, that's the golden egg, you know, the book will do well. But it's not always the case. And it's sometimes almost just for the author to say, ‘Well done, this is quality’. Which is not a bad thing, but you know, it helps with morale.
JR: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it comes down to the hand selling of a book in a bookshop, quite often, far more than putting a sticker on it. Even back in the Costa Award days, Mermaid did really well because it had bookseller support as well. And obviously, it did very well in your Waterstones where it was front and centre. But that did very well everywhere, didn't it?
So I guess it's trying to find that balance, trying to find the sweet spot when you obviously want your small presses to do well, but they need to be accessible to booksellers. It's hard enough getting your books into bookshops anyway, I’m sure.
IK: And getting them to trust you, to order more than one copy. Because there’s such limited shelf space. Yeah, it's very difficult.
I was in The Grove Bookshop last Friday. They've got us as their publisher of the month, which is amazing. As you come in, you've got a table, and you've got lots of our books. And they were saying, you know, we'd love to have a whole shop of indie books. But it's, you know, the HarperCollins and the Hachette, etc, which makes the money to enable us to have the indie table. So, whatever it might be, indie books aren’t for the masses. And that's not a bad thing. But it does mean that you've got to have, you know, a mix. And the booksellers almost have to have the larger publishers, who have the larger budgets and all of this, so that they can support the little guys. It's a weird ecosystem.
JR: It is. And then you look at, whether it's Books of the Month, Publishers of the Month, book club books. I mean, quite often we would find indie presses being selected as book club choices.
IK: That's good.
JR: Yeah. This is fantastic because you are kind of unearthing new voices and you are getting people out of their comfort zones and bursting that bubble a little bit is always great.
IK: We’re putting book club questions in the back of our books for this year because we thought that maybe book clubs, last year, were selecting them more and that maybe they needed a little push of how to start a discussion about it. And that might help.
JR: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let's go back a little step. Obviously, we’re talking a little bit about getting books on shelves. But before that happens, let's look at submissions.
What kinds of books are you looking for when you open your submissions? And how long does that process usually take?
IK: Yeah. So this year, it's from May 1st to July 28, I believe. And I'm hoping for, like I said, two things, themes that I'm looking to find this year. I would like to find utopian eco-narratives. There's a lot of dystopia around. So that's what I'm hoping for. Also, I'm looking to find things which explore biracial Britain, identity, and cross-culture. I'm really interested in this, I think, in 10 years or something, Britain will be predominantly biracial anyway. And there's still so much racism around. And I find these kinds of discussions about where that comes from, how that comes from, how we identify, really interesting.
And I want to do perhaps uncomfortable narratives. I like an uncomfortable narrative. So I want to find those prickly characters or thought processes that are surprising. And we've done a lot of quirky feminist short story collections. So I think we're going to get quite a lot of that, sort of, interrogating what a woman's place is. Sometimes that has been peppered through magical realism, at a point where there's a woman's breaking into insanity or frustration or something like that. And there's an element of magical realism at that breaking point, which, you know, we've done a lot of, but we still love. I'd like to see new interpretations of it.
So the winners that you'll see like Penguin, Bloomsbury, Hachette, you know, if they win a prize, they can heavily go to town on that. You know, they could do new covers, they can do talks, they can put a lot of ad spending, billboards, whatever it may be, and donate to schools, you know, all this awareness. Which if an indie wins, they're like, ‘Great, it's going to pay my bills!’ The priorities are different, and where the money would go is different.
And also mostly, unless there's some sort of discussion with the author, the money would go to the author. And then, the publisher makes the book sales money. So it's great for the author if they win 10k or whatever, but then you have to hope that maybe the publisher will get that in book sales. They might not. I think prizes are valuable in some way but for example, the Man Booker, which I think is probably one of the ones that the indies do best in because they like the literary, they like the sort of weird and different. It has been sort of criticised recently because the books are not selling very well. People are saying, you know, the sort of common reader who does not want to read the Man Booker Prize list. And year on year, the Man Booker prize shortlist books are selling less in bookshops, and they're getting more returns and the prize is not getting as much money back. And perhaps, you know, that's not that bad. Maybe they're just championing stories, which are a little bit different. And maybe it's a good thing to offer people diverse narratives. And maybe eventually they'll come around to it. Or at least we could just give those kind of books a chance. And I guess the other side is, you know, maybe like the judges are just a bit removed from what people actually want. I don't know, I know the International Man Booker is much better for indie visibility with translation. I've seen a lot of indies on that this year. But yeah, I mean, we would love to get to the shortlist or something of a book prize. We've not got there with novels. And I often just wonder whether they just read Penguin or, you know, they don't look at indie. I often wonder what goes on in those selection processes, because they just always seem to be the same people that win. So I'm kind of conflicted. I assume I would like them if we got somewhere close!
JR: Yeah, well, this is the problem isn't it? Who knows what kind of ripple effect that has on small presses? I mean in my experience you get a handful of people, maybe, interested in reading the Booker shortlist and very few people who try to make it through a longlist. And I guess if the publishers decide to slap a Booker Winner sticker on it, then it might draw a few more people in. But I don't know, I think they can be quite divisive. And I think it can split your audience a bit.
IK: Yeah, that's interesting. Something with the prize, that's the golden egg, you know, the book will do well. But it's not always the case. And it's sometimes almost just for the author to say, ‘Well done, this is quality’. Which is not a bad thing, but you know, it helps with morale.
JR: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it comes down to the hand selling of a book in a bookshop, quite often, far more than putting a sticker on it. Even back in the Costa Award days, Mermaid did really well because it had bookseller support as well. And obviously, it did very well in your Waterstones where it was front and centre. But that did very well everywhere, didn't it?
So I guess it's trying to find that balance, trying to find the sweet spot when you obviously want your small presses to do well, but they need to be accessible to booksellers. It's hard enough getting your books into bookshops anyway, I’m sure.
IK: And getting them to trust you, to order more than one copy. Because there’s such limited shelf space. Yeah, it's very difficult.
I was in The Grove Bookshop last Friday. They've got us as their publisher of the month, which is amazing. As you come in, you've got a table, and you've got lots of our books. And they were saying, you know, we'd love to have a whole shop of indie books. But it's, you know, the HarperCollins and the Hachette, etc, which makes the money to enable us to have the indie table. So, whatever it might be, indie books aren’t for the masses. And that's not a bad thing. But it does mean that you've got to have, you know, a mix. And the booksellers almost have to have the larger publishers, who have the larger budgets and all of this, so that they can support the little guys. It's a weird ecosystem.
JR: It is. And then you look at, whether it's Books of the Month, Publishers of the Month, book club books. I mean, quite often we would find indie presses being selected as book club choices.
IK: That's good.
JR: Yeah. This is fantastic because you are kind of unearthing new voices and you are getting people out of their comfort zones and bursting that bubble a little bit is always great.
IK: We’re putting book club questions in the back of our books for this year because we thought that maybe book clubs, last year, were selecting them more and that maybe they needed a little push of how to start a discussion about it. And that might help.
JR: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let's go back a little step. Obviously, we’re talking a little bit about getting books on shelves. But before that happens, let's look at submissions.
What kinds of books are you looking for when you open your submissions? And how long does that process usually take?
IK: Yeah. So this year, it's from May 1st to July 28, I believe. And I'm hoping for, like I said, two things, themes that I'm looking to find this year. I would like to find utopian eco-narratives. There's a lot of dystopia around. So that's what I'm hoping for. Also, I'm looking to find things which explore biracial Britain, identity, and cross-culture. I'm really interested in this, I think, in 10 years or something, Britain will be predominantly biracial anyway. And there's still so much racism around. And I find these kinds of discussions about where that comes from, how that comes from, how we identify, really interesting.
And I want to do perhaps uncomfortable narratives. I like an uncomfortable narrative. So I want to find those prickly characters or thought processes that are surprising. And we've done a lot of quirky feminist short story collections. So I think we're going to get quite a lot of that, sort of, interrogating what a woman's place is. Sometimes that has been peppered through magical realism, at a point where there's a woman's breaking into insanity or frustration or something like that. And there's an element of magical realism at that breaking point, which, you know, we've done a lot of, but we still love. I'd like to see new interpretations of it.
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We've had a lot of nature meeting women. I don't know what the next thing is, but I'm looking forward to seeing it when I see it. And yeah, I think we're not constrained by genre on the novel side. But I see historical fiction do quite well when it's revealing something about the world today. So like The Unpicking by Donna Moore, we had an interrogation of the political system in Glasgow in the Victorian age, but it's still completely… like, the police force is completely corrupt now. And women aren't safe on the streets in the same way that they weren't back then. So we were able to look at the police reports from Scotland very recently about the corruption there and whether there is a systemic sexism issue and compare it to then when these women are up against the police force. We have the first police women in Scotland in the book and things like that. So I like that element. Psychological, possibly thrillers, work quite well for us if they’re exploring societal fears, like a political niche. We've got a Modern Gothic anthology later on -
JR: I'm excited about that, actually! I read that after the February Manchester meet. IK: Thanks, nice. |
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JR: Yeah, I really loved that. I'm looking forward to seeing how that acts around Halloween.
IK: Yeah, we’ve got some cool things planned. Dead Ink, their launch at the bookshop, is already sold out, so hopefully we're going to get a bigger venue that's outsourced when they fill up this small bookshop space. But we're going to do possibly an organ launch in Birmingham as well. One of the people there works for a chamber orchestra, I think, at the venue, and the chamber orchestra said they could play the organ in the readings, or something like that.
JR: That sounds so much fun!
IK: Yeah, and we're hoping to do that in Birmingham, at Voce Books in Birmingham, then we're going to do Blackwells Manchester as well. It's quite an international range of writers. So I’m hoping to do something maybe longer as well. They have this strange bookshop that is about the occult. But we may not be occult enough for them, we may not be weird enough. But yeah, we're looking at lots of different launches for it.
JR: I'm getting the impression that you quite like your wide-ranging books. You take in an awful lot. Are you doing all of the reading? It's so time-consuming, that element of the job. You must get a lot of enjoyment from it though.
IK: Yeah, I would say… I have to be careful what I say, but I would say I'm reasonably brutal with my reading. And I do all the reading myself. I find that if I outsource it, you know, even to someone who knows Far On The Wall very well, it just won't be quite right. Or they'll say, ‘I think you'll like this’, and I'll go, ‘No because we had a book like this in 2019’. Or, you know, it's one of these things. It's all in my head. And it's one of the elements that I just couldn't foresee outsourcing.
So I tend to do a bit in the morning, and a bit in the evening. It does take a long time, especially the novels, and every year it becomes harder. Because the standard gets higher and people understand what we want more. And they read something and say, ‘Oh, well, if Isabelle liked this one, she's gonna like this one!’ And they're right, and then we have such a big maybe pile.
So it's almost easier when they've not read our guidelines and it's not at all relevant. And I'm like, ‘Great, I’ll have to agonise over this one’.
JR: Yeah, you open yourself up to an awful lot of submissions there though, aren't you?
IK: Yeah, so yeah, it will be a lot and the admin of it is a lot. And that's why it's so frustrating when people don't read the page and that's why I'm already angsty about it.
JR: So what's the time scale on getting, let's say, for example, a novel rather than a collection together? Once you've closed your submissions, how long would it take you to get them onto a bookshelf?
IK: So, if it's a novel, I like to give it as long as possible, basically, to come to fruition. So I'll sit the author down and say, ‘How ready do you think this novel is?’ Because some writers, even if I think it's ready, they think it needs a lot of work. And then I don't want them to feel rushed. If they were thinking they could have eight months to edit, and I've said, oh, actually, it was only ever gonna be four. And then they're like, ‘Oh, my God!’
So I have those discussions initially to set the timeline. And then if we need to do structural, or developmental edits on it. I'm doing that at the moment with the book that's out in October 2025, which seems a bit crazy, but this is the longest example because the book was 130,000 words, which was well over what I would take. And the agent was a bit cheeky with it because they didn't give a word count. And I thought, ‘Oh, they won't send me something that's that much over’.
So now it requires some cutting and then we'll go through it again. And so at the moment, you know, there's no point in starting to edit yet. But they're super quick, the author. I think we'll be absolutely fine. But I wanted to put it in October next year because I wanted to give them a really long period of time. Then, we can go into copyediting the sixth-month timeline before publication, that would be my PR timeline. So I would want the paperback proofs printed six months before it comes out and then it would be two months before when I do the official print run. The first four months of that six-month period are very busy for endorsements, and reviews, you know, that's kind of crunch time for if I can get all the things in place for the book to get preorders and look attractive to bookshops. So yeah, for that book, it will start six months before October.
JR: It's kind of March/April time, wouldn't it?
IK: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's true, actually, because I'm doing a lot of PR for our October books now. So yeah, it's kind of that timeline. Generally, editing might be about six months or something like that. I'm trying to do about eight books a year at the moment. It's my new experiment. I used to do more. And now I'm focusing on doing longer book marketing and PR campaigns and doing less. I want to really focus on them to see what the live response to that is.
JR: I've seen that with Heloise Press, they try to do five or six books a year. Do you think that's where small presses' strengths are? Choosing less and putting more focus on them.
IK: It's a strange one, I think, because we're cross-genre, and cross poetry and fiction. I think that's why we used to do more. And now that we do more fiction, we can afford to do less. I think the beauty of a small press is that you can specialise more, you know, people aren't looking for you to bring out the next commercial romance every other month. They're looking for something a little bit niche, they wouldn't expect you to do the commercial trade approach. They want you to have the quality and they expect that quality from you, I guess, you’re held to higher standards than, you know, you would be for your Penguin imprints.
JR: Sure, I guess if there's less noise, people can really judge you on the work you're doing rather than the quantity.
IK: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there might be fewer opportunities for writers once you do less, but it does benefit the authors you choose because that book's going to have more longevity.
JR: So, let's talk about the Northern Fiction Alliance because I'm interested in what you're all doing. It's a fantastic list.
I know that Comma Press announced that you were hired to help support the Northern Fiction Alliance. Can you tell us a little bit about what that role is and how that fits in with the work that you do with Fly On The Wall as well?
IK: Yeah, so I've been doing the Northern Fiction Alliance since January last year [2023]. And essentially, my role is to boost awareness of the publishers in the alliance. There are 30, and quite a few are poetry or DIY. But there's a core list of about 10 who are the most active. We will achieve 10 things like book launches and book pitching events to booksellers, and library pitching. We do film pitches, we've done four film pitches this year. And those have had good results. And then we did some influencer days, which was a new thing. Organised mentorships for early career publishers. And… what else do we do? We’re doing a regional diversity roundtable in May. So, the idea is to look at how we hire in accessible and diverse ways and bring things out of London. And what does that look like? Is the publishing industry changing? Looking at trends and reports with the Publishers Association. We also team up with them to do training for publishers. So the Northern Fiction Alliance at the moment is essentially what I can bring to it. The alliance is always there, but it's, ‘What do the members want? ‘What kind of events can I organise?’ and ‘What can we do in a short period of time?’
JR: You must be so short of time as it is, but it's amazing to see how much you're putting out into the world.
IK: Yeah, I mean, it's been a natural segue and a fun segue. I do it one day a week, under Comma [Press] and because I was always organising the Northern Publishers Fair. And that's every sort of April-May time, it's around the bank holiday. And this year it's on Saturday 27th of April. Yeah, so, Manchester Central Library was really important for that.
When I started doing events in Manchester, I think it was 2019 and no one knew who I was. And so I wasn't getting invited to the book fairs and I thought, ‘Well, why don't I organise a book fair?!’ And so then that's where it started. It was really popular from the beginning, and so we just kept repeating it. And it's brilliant. A lot of people come from universities to talk about publishing, people come with perspective authors and people who love reading and want to network and make new friends. And so then, when I did the normal fiction line, I already knew people and a little of how some of Manchester’s spaces operated.
IK: Yeah, we’ve got some cool things planned. Dead Ink, their launch at the bookshop, is already sold out, so hopefully we're going to get a bigger venue that's outsourced when they fill up this small bookshop space. But we're going to do possibly an organ launch in Birmingham as well. One of the people there works for a chamber orchestra, I think, at the venue, and the chamber orchestra said they could play the organ in the readings, or something like that.
JR: That sounds so much fun!
IK: Yeah, and we're hoping to do that in Birmingham, at Voce Books in Birmingham, then we're going to do Blackwells Manchester as well. It's quite an international range of writers. So I’m hoping to do something maybe longer as well. They have this strange bookshop that is about the occult. But we may not be occult enough for them, we may not be weird enough. But yeah, we're looking at lots of different launches for it.
JR: I'm getting the impression that you quite like your wide-ranging books. You take in an awful lot. Are you doing all of the reading? It's so time-consuming, that element of the job. You must get a lot of enjoyment from it though.
IK: Yeah, I would say… I have to be careful what I say, but I would say I'm reasonably brutal with my reading. And I do all the reading myself. I find that if I outsource it, you know, even to someone who knows Far On The Wall very well, it just won't be quite right. Or they'll say, ‘I think you'll like this’, and I'll go, ‘No because we had a book like this in 2019’. Or, you know, it's one of these things. It's all in my head. And it's one of the elements that I just couldn't foresee outsourcing.
So I tend to do a bit in the morning, and a bit in the evening. It does take a long time, especially the novels, and every year it becomes harder. Because the standard gets higher and people understand what we want more. And they read something and say, ‘Oh, well, if Isabelle liked this one, she's gonna like this one!’ And they're right, and then we have such a big maybe pile.
So it's almost easier when they've not read our guidelines and it's not at all relevant. And I'm like, ‘Great, I’ll have to agonise over this one’.
JR: Yeah, you open yourself up to an awful lot of submissions there though, aren't you?
IK: Yeah, so yeah, it will be a lot and the admin of it is a lot. And that's why it's so frustrating when people don't read the page and that's why I'm already angsty about it.
JR: So what's the time scale on getting, let's say, for example, a novel rather than a collection together? Once you've closed your submissions, how long would it take you to get them onto a bookshelf?
IK: So, if it's a novel, I like to give it as long as possible, basically, to come to fruition. So I'll sit the author down and say, ‘How ready do you think this novel is?’ Because some writers, even if I think it's ready, they think it needs a lot of work. And then I don't want them to feel rushed. If they were thinking they could have eight months to edit, and I've said, oh, actually, it was only ever gonna be four. And then they're like, ‘Oh, my God!’
So I have those discussions initially to set the timeline. And then if we need to do structural, or developmental edits on it. I'm doing that at the moment with the book that's out in October 2025, which seems a bit crazy, but this is the longest example because the book was 130,000 words, which was well over what I would take. And the agent was a bit cheeky with it because they didn't give a word count. And I thought, ‘Oh, they won't send me something that's that much over’.
So now it requires some cutting and then we'll go through it again. And so at the moment, you know, there's no point in starting to edit yet. But they're super quick, the author. I think we'll be absolutely fine. But I wanted to put it in October next year because I wanted to give them a really long period of time. Then, we can go into copyediting the sixth-month timeline before publication, that would be my PR timeline. So I would want the paperback proofs printed six months before it comes out and then it would be two months before when I do the official print run. The first four months of that six-month period are very busy for endorsements, and reviews, you know, that's kind of crunch time for if I can get all the things in place for the book to get preorders and look attractive to bookshops. So yeah, for that book, it will start six months before October.
JR: It's kind of March/April time, wouldn't it?
IK: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's true, actually, because I'm doing a lot of PR for our October books now. So yeah, it's kind of that timeline. Generally, editing might be about six months or something like that. I'm trying to do about eight books a year at the moment. It's my new experiment. I used to do more. And now I'm focusing on doing longer book marketing and PR campaigns and doing less. I want to really focus on them to see what the live response to that is.
JR: I've seen that with Heloise Press, they try to do five or six books a year. Do you think that's where small presses' strengths are? Choosing less and putting more focus on them.
IK: It's a strange one, I think, because we're cross-genre, and cross poetry and fiction. I think that's why we used to do more. And now that we do more fiction, we can afford to do less. I think the beauty of a small press is that you can specialise more, you know, people aren't looking for you to bring out the next commercial romance every other month. They're looking for something a little bit niche, they wouldn't expect you to do the commercial trade approach. They want you to have the quality and they expect that quality from you, I guess, you’re held to higher standards than, you know, you would be for your Penguin imprints.
JR: Sure, I guess if there's less noise, people can really judge you on the work you're doing rather than the quantity.
IK: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there might be fewer opportunities for writers once you do less, but it does benefit the authors you choose because that book's going to have more longevity.
JR: So, let's talk about the Northern Fiction Alliance because I'm interested in what you're all doing. It's a fantastic list.
I know that Comma Press announced that you were hired to help support the Northern Fiction Alliance. Can you tell us a little bit about what that role is and how that fits in with the work that you do with Fly On The Wall as well?
IK: Yeah, so I've been doing the Northern Fiction Alliance since January last year [2023]. And essentially, my role is to boost awareness of the publishers in the alliance. There are 30, and quite a few are poetry or DIY. But there's a core list of about 10 who are the most active. We will achieve 10 things like book launches and book pitching events to booksellers, and library pitching. We do film pitches, we've done four film pitches this year. And those have had good results. And then we did some influencer days, which was a new thing. Organised mentorships for early career publishers. And… what else do we do? We’re doing a regional diversity roundtable in May. So, the idea is to look at how we hire in accessible and diverse ways and bring things out of London. And what does that look like? Is the publishing industry changing? Looking at trends and reports with the Publishers Association. We also team up with them to do training for publishers. So the Northern Fiction Alliance at the moment is essentially what I can bring to it. The alliance is always there, but it's, ‘What do the members want? ‘What kind of events can I organise?’ and ‘What can we do in a short period of time?’
JR: You must be so short of time as it is, but it's amazing to see how much you're putting out into the world.
IK: Yeah, I mean, it's been a natural segue and a fun segue. I do it one day a week, under Comma [Press] and because I was always organising the Northern Publishers Fair. And that's every sort of April-May time, it's around the bank holiday. And this year it's on Saturday 27th of April. Yeah, so, Manchester Central Library was really important for that.
When I started doing events in Manchester, I think it was 2019 and no one knew who I was. And so I wasn't getting invited to the book fairs and I thought, ‘Well, why don't I organise a book fair?!’ And so then that's where it started. It was really popular from the beginning, and so we just kept repeating it. And it's brilliant. A lot of people come from universities to talk about publishing, people come with perspective authors and people who love reading and want to network and make new friends. And so then, when I did the normal fiction line, I already knew people and a little of how some of Manchester’s spaces operated.
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JR: I know one of the main aims of the Northern Fiction Alliance is to position Northern writing and publishing as a culturally distinct thing on a global scale. Firstly, I guess, why do you think that's important? And whether you, as Fly On The Wall, have been impacted by that North-South divide?
IK: Yeah, we have this strange thing where northern publishers will always have to fight for coverage and to prove that their books are quality because we have a London-centric press. And so the reviews that you see in the nationals are very, very, very rarely going to be outside London. So you have to fight for the coverage. And unfortunately, you have to say, ‘Okay, well, if a northern publisher alone isn’t going to bang the drum and people are going to pay attention, then an alliance is sort of necessary’. I think a lot of what we're doing is by necessity, perhaps. Our books have that in-your-face quality, perhaps gritty, perhaps a focus on working-class characters and we do that loud and proud. And I think we have to do that in order to be noticed. But I feel like there is that sort of community spirit and creative flair, which is missing from the London publishing scene. |
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I think that in terms of submissions, the North-South divide doesn't really exist for Fly On The Wall. We receive a lot of people from all over. But in terms of coverage, it definitely exists. We get support from the North in a way that we don't from the South. And I think it's the same with the prizes. So you need to create spaces which include other people because, for whatever reason, we're not capable in the publishing industry of involving everyone.
JR: Is there any one publisher, or publishers, that inspired you when you first began? Was there anyone that really stood out from the crowd that you thought, ‘That's what I want to do’, or ‘I want to do that but I want to put my own spin on it’?
IK: And I've got two, but they're not in the fiction lines. Is that okay?
JR: Yeah, of course.
IK: So yeah, I've got two that are women-led that I always look up to and still look up to. So one's The Emma Press in Birmingham. They do illustrative poetry and short story collections for children and adults but with a focus on children. And they've really grown this distinct identity through literally writing, hand doing the typefaces and everything like that. And they're quirky, gently feminist, and uplifting. There's a universal feel to their work. They're gentle enough that it's appealed to a really wide audience, but also they do a lot of translation. And I think, you know, Emma has used her skills in multilingualism to travel and get new narratives into the UK. I find her model very interesting, especially how she's grown the amount of people that she has the days that they operate and where she found their skills. I find the people that she's hired are similar to her, like the qualities of that person, which is also interesting in the ethos that's continued. Those people are reflective, creative and artistic.
And then the other one is 404 Inc. in Edinburgh. They’re pretty much a household name now for your in-your-face, feminist, loud-and-proud sort of publisher. And it's two women who are freelancers and I know, prior to when they were getting funding, they had to pause their publication projects for a while until they got funding - it's how vulnerable you can be as a publisher, but they are really successful. They have an Inklings series, which is very well supported in the North. And I think what they're doing is very interesting for working-class writers, queer writers. They seem to have a really good PR arm in that, you know, their books, you always know what they're about and the sort of style of their books. And I think they have a bit of heart behind them. And so, yeah, I think their branding on both sides is very good in different ways and would attract different audiences. Their business models are showing that they're just gonna continue to grow.
I'm always very interested in seeing how people grow. And I know 404 has an internship that they do and things like that. I think they have an office dog, an important part of the team!
JR: All things to aspire to, yeah.
IK: Yeah.
JR: Both of them, in very different ways, are very distinctive, aren't they? I think they've got such a good high-street presence. I'm seeing them everywhere now. Primarily, I'd say with independent bookshops, I think they're doing really good things.
So, I want to finish by talking about some exciting books that you've got on the way, and anything that you're working on right now. Could you tell us about something that you're working on at the moment that you're particularly excited about?
IK: Yeah, for sure. So we're underway doing final proofreading notes and a PR strategy for one of our October books, which is a novella called Lying Perfectly Still by Laura Fish. She's a Newcastle writer and she is a lecturer in Creative Writing and it's a really interesting book because it's about a 23-year-old protagonist, called Koliwe. So her father has just passed away and her mum died when she was quite young, and she still doesn't really know anything about her Swazi heritage. So she says, okay, I'm going to join British Aid and that's going to enable me to go travel to the Kingdom of Swaziland, which is now Eswatini, set in the 90s.
And so she goes and learns a hell of a lot about who she is and where her morals are and, you know, kind of just sees British Aid as this strange colonial force that it's meant to be for good, but actually, you know, do the people there want it? And she starts to form this connection with a local girl called Tandi and she finds out a lot about herself through that process. There's some exploitation going on very high up within British Aid and although she's 23, she has to sort of say, ‘Okay, I'm in a strange country, I've not really got the family network here to support me, but, you know, can I stand up for this?’ And the backdrop is the AIDS epidemic. And so she's also sort of scared that the city's British Aid is trying to help the community in Eswatini to fight it. It's a really interesting book. Laura, in the 90s, was a reporter in Eswatini and she did some work in the AIDS community. So it's an interesting book for her own voice. And has this sort of cultural identity split, which I'm very interested in.
JR: Yeah, I've come across some of Laura's writing before, I think. So yeah, that one jumped out at me when I was looking ahead.
This interview is going to be focused mostly April-May time. So I was wondering if we could maybe pick one or two titles that people are going to see at the moment in their local bookshops.
I know The Dark Within Them has had some great traction since it came out in March. I've seen an awful lot, particularly with indie support. Can you tell us maybe a little bit about how putting that out into the world has been and how the response has been so far?
IK: Yeah, definitely. So, to start with, The Dark Within Them is my debut psychological thriller. I've been really interested in publishing it, and because I've always worked with other publishers for my work, that's been really rewarding. Especially, I think, because Fly On The Wall is much like a community publisher, and so it gives back a lot. And I've noticed, publishing my debut novel, there's been a lot of giving back to me and kindness and you know, people wanting you to come to an event or excited that you've got something out yourself. They don't necessarily know you, but they're a bookshop that's supported you, you know, so I've not physically met them but they're just so lovely. So there's definitely been that element.
I think it also helps the writers to see, okay, you know, Isabelle's sort of been through this whole journey, if we're doing a developmental edit, and I'm finding it difficult, Isabelle also found a developmental edit difficult. She understands, she knows what that's like. And I guess, you know, it can build empathy between me and my writers, or we can support each other. So it kind of fits, we're Fly On The Wall, we have that sort of community back and forth.
I don't feel like I'm above my authors, we're all collaborating on one project to get it to reach an audience. And it has been really interesting doing a thriller because it is more commercial. We have The Sleepless by Liam Bell, on our books, which is a psychological literary thriller, which is brilliant. But yeah, it was only our second one. So it’s interesting to break out into different genres as well and find new audiences.
JR: Is there any one publisher, or publishers, that inspired you when you first began? Was there anyone that really stood out from the crowd that you thought, ‘That's what I want to do’, or ‘I want to do that but I want to put my own spin on it’?
IK: And I've got two, but they're not in the fiction lines. Is that okay?
JR: Yeah, of course.
IK: So yeah, I've got two that are women-led that I always look up to and still look up to. So one's The Emma Press in Birmingham. They do illustrative poetry and short story collections for children and adults but with a focus on children. And they've really grown this distinct identity through literally writing, hand doing the typefaces and everything like that. And they're quirky, gently feminist, and uplifting. There's a universal feel to their work. They're gentle enough that it's appealed to a really wide audience, but also they do a lot of translation. And I think, you know, Emma has used her skills in multilingualism to travel and get new narratives into the UK. I find her model very interesting, especially how she's grown the amount of people that she has the days that they operate and where she found their skills. I find the people that she's hired are similar to her, like the qualities of that person, which is also interesting in the ethos that's continued. Those people are reflective, creative and artistic.
And then the other one is 404 Inc. in Edinburgh. They’re pretty much a household name now for your in-your-face, feminist, loud-and-proud sort of publisher. And it's two women who are freelancers and I know, prior to when they were getting funding, they had to pause their publication projects for a while until they got funding - it's how vulnerable you can be as a publisher, but they are really successful. They have an Inklings series, which is very well supported in the North. And I think what they're doing is very interesting for working-class writers, queer writers. They seem to have a really good PR arm in that, you know, their books, you always know what they're about and the sort of style of their books. And I think they have a bit of heart behind them. And so, yeah, I think their branding on both sides is very good in different ways and would attract different audiences. Their business models are showing that they're just gonna continue to grow.
I'm always very interested in seeing how people grow. And I know 404 has an internship that they do and things like that. I think they have an office dog, an important part of the team!
JR: All things to aspire to, yeah.
IK: Yeah.
JR: Both of them, in very different ways, are very distinctive, aren't they? I think they've got such a good high-street presence. I'm seeing them everywhere now. Primarily, I'd say with independent bookshops, I think they're doing really good things.
So, I want to finish by talking about some exciting books that you've got on the way, and anything that you're working on right now. Could you tell us about something that you're working on at the moment that you're particularly excited about?
IK: Yeah, for sure. So we're underway doing final proofreading notes and a PR strategy for one of our October books, which is a novella called Lying Perfectly Still by Laura Fish. She's a Newcastle writer and she is a lecturer in Creative Writing and it's a really interesting book because it's about a 23-year-old protagonist, called Koliwe. So her father has just passed away and her mum died when she was quite young, and she still doesn't really know anything about her Swazi heritage. So she says, okay, I'm going to join British Aid and that's going to enable me to go travel to the Kingdom of Swaziland, which is now Eswatini, set in the 90s.
And so she goes and learns a hell of a lot about who she is and where her morals are and, you know, kind of just sees British Aid as this strange colonial force that it's meant to be for good, but actually, you know, do the people there want it? And she starts to form this connection with a local girl called Tandi and she finds out a lot about herself through that process. There's some exploitation going on very high up within British Aid and although she's 23, she has to sort of say, ‘Okay, I'm in a strange country, I've not really got the family network here to support me, but, you know, can I stand up for this?’ And the backdrop is the AIDS epidemic. And so she's also sort of scared that the city's British Aid is trying to help the community in Eswatini to fight it. It's a really interesting book. Laura, in the 90s, was a reporter in Eswatini and she did some work in the AIDS community. So it's an interesting book for her own voice. And has this sort of cultural identity split, which I'm very interested in.
JR: Yeah, I've come across some of Laura's writing before, I think. So yeah, that one jumped out at me when I was looking ahead.
This interview is going to be focused mostly April-May time. So I was wondering if we could maybe pick one or two titles that people are going to see at the moment in their local bookshops.
I know The Dark Within Them has had some great traction since it came out in March. I've seen an awful lot, particularly with indie support. Can you tell us maybe a little bit about how putting that out into the world has been and how the response has been so far?
IK: Yeah, definitely. So, to start with, The Dark Within Them is my debut psychological thriller. I've been really interested in publishing it, and because I've always worked with other publishers for my work, that's been really rewarding. Especially, I think, because Fly On The Wall is much like a community publisher, and so it gives back a lot. And I've noticed, publishing my debut novel, there's been a lot of giving back to me and kindness and you know, people wanting you to come to an event or excited that you've got something out yourself. They don't necessarily know you, but they're a bookshop that's supported you, you know, so I've not physically met them but they're just so lovely. So there's definitely been that element.
I think it also helps the writers to see, okay, you know, Isabelle's sort of been through this whole journey, if we're doing a developmental edit, and I'm finding it difficult, Isabelle also found a developmental edit difficult. She understands, she knows what that's like. And I guess, you know, it can build empathy between me and my writers, or we can support each other. So it kind of fits, we're Fly On The Wall, we have that sort of community back and forth.
I don't feel like I'm above my authors, we're all collaborating on one project to get it to reach an audience. And it has been really interesting doing a thriller because it is more commercial. We have The Sleepless by Liam Bell, on our books, which is a psychological literary thriller, which is brilliant. But yeah, it was only our second one. So it’s interesting to break out into different genres as well and find new audiences.
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JR: When you're working for yourself and publishing your own book, how was that process different for you? Did you feel different pressures on putting your own book out compared to somebody else's? Was there maybe more collaboration, somebody else editing or somebody else proofreading, where the process might differ?
IK: Yeah, we had four editors throughout the process. I had some Arts Council funding for developing the novel, so had a developmental editor, I had a report and then a mentoring process, and then a copy editor and a proofreader; so, it was thoroughly done by other people, which is really important. I strongly feel you get blind to your own work and you can't edit it yourself. And it's a much better book, thanks to discussing it with other people. The cover design was really fun because I do all the design and all the covers. I could do my own and I knew what I wanted the colour scheme to be and that kind of thing. And then, you know, when I was doing the blurb and things like that, we had to ask, ‘Did it actually fit?’ or, ‘Would you pick it up?’, ‘Does it give too much away?’, and all of this. So that was probably harder than doing another external author's blurb. It felt like this was my chance, I have to put my money where my mouth is, this sort of thing. So, if I'm telling authors, you know, ‘Go to events, seek out talks, and do social media’, am I doing the same? It's a blueprint - for me to say, you know, as a debut author, what kind of sales and outreach can I achieve myself? And then that's sort of a blueprint for other authors. How can I build them up and build an audience for that genre? Which we do a lot of because we do a lot of genres that we've never done before because I'm a glutton for punishment. You have to find an audience. |
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JR: I mean, it's good to be able to try a different genre on for size when it's your own, you know, and kind of maybe finding those different audiences when maybe the pressure is slightly different. Would you consider doing more thrillers and more crime in the future now that you've done your own?
IK: Yeah, so we have crime elements in The Sleepless by Liam Belle and The Unthinking by Donna Moore. There were two crimes on the dark web in them. So yeah, they all have elements. I'd say, if it had a political element in it, to me, there's no reason why we couldn't do thrillers and crime. I think they were all sold well enough for me to say, ‘Yeah, we've got an audience that likes them, and that likes this niche’.
I guess it's all about having a character that leads the way that is different and quirky and feels like an indie press character, and that they offer something different, or their thought process is different, or they’re, I don't know, a diverse character in the wrong place at a strange time, and it creates conflict. And so, there's no reason why it couldn't be a crime novel with those sorts of elements. For sure!
IK: Yeah, so we have crime elements in The Sleepless by Liam Belle and The Unthinking by Donna Moore. There were two crimes on the dark web in them. So yeah, they all have elements. I'd say, if it had a political element in it, to me, there's no reason why we couldn't do thrillers and crime. I think they were all sold well enough for me to say, ‘Yeah, we've got an audience that likes them, and that likes this niche’.
I guess it's all about having a character that leads the way that is different and quirky and feels like an indie press character, and that they offer something different, or their thought process is different, or they’re, I don't know, a diverse character in the wrong place at a strange time, and it creates conflict. And so, there's no reason why it couldn't be a crime novel with those sorts of elements. For sure!
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Go and show some support for Isabelle and Fly On The Wall Press by browsing their website and taking a look at their brilliant list of new titles coming this year. Plus, check out their Talks and Workshops page to see where they'll be near you, and what university and school outreach projects they have cooking!
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