JESS CHANDLER

PROTOTYPE PUBLISHING, FOUNDER

For our next Featured Press Spotlight we spoke with publisher and editor, Jess Chandler, about their journey into the book industry, co-founding their first publishing house and record label, Test Centre, and going on to establish one of the most innovative, eye-catching & experimental presses in the UK. 

Prototype is a London-based publisher of fiction, poetry, anthologies and interdisciplinary projects, championing the work of new voices in free-form contemporary literature. Recent bestselling releases such as Pleasure Beach, Vehicle, and The Seers are perfect examples of how Prototype strive to promote high quality work from across various forms and from a multitude of backgrounds.

You know, sometimes I think, ‘Are these covers not striking enough?’ You go into a bookshop and you see all the colours and crazy designs, but actually, I think because of all that, there's all that emphasis on design, and it's quite over-designed, but actually, the simplicity starts to stand out because it's different to everything else on the table.

JR: So, Jess, I was hoping you could give us a little introduction and maybe tell us a bit about how you first started working in publishing. You were in TV production for a short while, is that right? 

JC: Yeah, I can give you just a quick summary. So, I studied English Literature and I was interested in documentaries and so I worked in factual TV for a while, all on freelance contracts, mainly as a researcher on history and arts programs. And then, I had a friend who from my university, and at uni worked together on a magazine and then we're both doing a bit of freelance reviewing and finding that frustrating and terribly paid and thought, ‘Well, maybe we should start something together instead.’ I was actually living in Norway at the time so most of this idea grew through writing letters to each other. 

JR: Oh, wow. 

JC: Yeah, and we sort of exchanged all these ideas and we came up with a very specific project, which was to produce a series of spoken word vinyl records, 12-inch records. We wrote to five authors who we were interested in and who we thought might be well suited to the form. And the first who responded was Ian Sinclair. 
I think it kind of resonated with what he had spent a lot of his early career doing which was small press publishing and he seemed to like the spirit of it. So we went over to his house and had a chat and then we ended up doing the first record with him. So that was how Test Center started and then we did some more records and then started doing a very kind of DIY magazine which was just a stapled thing. We would invite a few people to contribute and then that kind of led into doing poetry collections and some novels and then it sort of started to grow. 
Meanwhile, I was still working full-time and doing TV stuff but feeling a bit unexcited by it I suppose. And then had sort of started to take a few periods where I would not take another TV contract just to try and focus, it was so impossible to be making any money at that point. And then it was kind of getting to a point of needing more of our time and Will who I was running it with, he kind of was part of Test Center set up, the book dealing arm of the company, I guess. He was very interested in archiving, collecting and writing catalogues. So he started doing that and I was managing more of the publishing and it was quite hard to make the two things fit. I suppose book dealing was a more straightforward way of making money in a way with just selling books and publishing is so much more unpredictable. So the kind of balance of that was quite tricky. And then after I had my first child we just decided - because Will also had moved out of London and we weren't seeing each other so often - that it wasn't really going to work to continue together. 

And that was the point at which I could have stopped but decided to carry on and I bought him out I suppose, not that it was much money, but I took over all of our list. So I sent the list but decided to have a change of name just to make it clear that it was something [else] and then started Prototype. That was in 2019. And I guess the aim was to carry on with much of what we had done at Test Centre but with adding a lot more fiction because I suppose I've always been more a reader of fiction than poetry, but I also thought that was where the potential for possibly making something more sustainable would be in fiction. So yeah, so that was how Prototype started. And then, that was 2019, I just did a couple of books I think and then of course we went straight into Covid. I’d also just had another child.

JR: Okay, so tricky timing. How did you manage the time through lockdown then, were you still able to put some work towards Prototype? 

JC: I just carried on as though nothing had changed. I think what was really interesting about that time was that it showed the resilience of being an independent publisher and relying so much on the community. At that point, our sales were mainly direct to our website. We had some distribution, but it wasn't very wide, so we weren't that affected by bookshop closures. At that point, in the kind of early days, it was sort of okay. We were about to launch a short story collection when lockdown happened. The loss of events was quite a big thing because that had always been a really good big part of what we were doing. I say we, by the way, this was very much just me at this point. 

JR: Well I was gonna ask, yeah, I mean, how many people do you work with now and how many did you have at the time? 

JC: So at the time nobody, for the first three years nobody, apart from freelance designers. I worked on a few books with a freelance publicist, just on a very very small thing, like it's probably a few days per book. But otherwise just me, and it wasn't until ‘22 I think, that I enjoyed one person part-time. And that's still the case. It's me and then one person two and a half days a week. That's it. 

JR: I mean, you've got a lot on your hands. You know, the more people I talk to, especially those in small presses, like yourself, there's an awful lot of juggling to do - 

JC: Yeah, there really is!

JR: - but that never seems to put any of you off! 

JC: Yeah, it's interesting. I think the workload is always there in your mind. There's always more to do. That is definitely stressful. But I think one of the great things about it is that you have to learn so many different skills. And I feel kind of grateful for that. I think it makes it interesting and that whatever the future holds, I feel like I will have, if Prototype completely fails at some point or if it becomes unsustainable, at least I will have come away from the experience with a huge number of new skills. So that's nice. And just the variety makes it interesting as well, you know, that you're always having to learn new things. So I like that aspect of it, although occasionally I do just think wouldn't it be nice to hand this over to someone who really knows what they’re doing. 

JR: Just looking at the website and seeing what you've produced over the last handful of years, I can see that you've got four strands to the main publication, including the anthology. Can you tell us a bit about what these strands are and how they operate independently? 

JC: Yeah, so I remember coming up with these in a couple of hours when I came up with the name Prototype. The idea was that it was a kind of progression from Test Center and it was like what happens when you've tested things out you start forming something a bit more complete but it's still sort of testing grounds. I like the idea of it being something that's kind of trying out new things I suppose. And then I was thinking about the different kinds of things I wanted to publish and thought that dividing it into these categories might be a nice way of separating things. Fiction and poetry, I always wanted to do, they were the two central things. The interdisciplinary work I wanted to make separate because I definitely felt I wanted to continue with that because so much of the work we are submitted falls in that area I think there just aren't that many publishers doing that kind of work. So I think that's kind of one of our niches, I guess. Anthologies was a way of continuing from the Test Center magazine that we did every year. ​

I wanted it to be something with subscribers and I didn't feel like it was a magazine and I didn't want to be competing with other poetry or fiction magazines. The anthology was more of a kind of editorial thing that I would work on every year and that is both a showcase of work that we have coming up and also mainly a platform for new writers who you've never published before. That also allows us to have open submissions every year even if we're not able to really open submissions for the other strands all the time. I mean, I did last year and I still haven't responded to every single person because it was just too much. So I think it feels important to have that openness in at least one area every year. 

​JR: And what are you looking for in any new work that lands on your desk? What makes something right for Prototype? 

JC: That’s a question that's always tricky to answer because I think it's it is quite subjective. I think you kind of have an instinct about when something feels exciting. I'm definitely interested in formal experimentation. I like things that are playing with the conventions of different genres. I'm trying to sort of also come away from the label, I guess, of being a publisher of experimental writing. I think that often has connotations of difficulty or inaccessibility, which is absolutely not the kind of thing that I'm looking for. I want things to be breaking the mould, but also to be readable and accessible and enjoyable to read. So finding that balance that somewhat sits between the two. I think this sort of hybridity is also partly about the way that the publishing world works, the kind of categories that things are mainly asked to fit into. I try not to have things categorised, even if that causes problems when we're putting our data up on Nielsens or whatever. I think things that might need to be categorised into three different areas is what I'm interested in. 

JR: I know you've said before, certainly during COVID, that small presses are leading the way when it comes to innovation, in confronting the challenges of lockdown and showing an ability to respond and be flexible. 
Now that we're a few years out of that period, in terms of publishing, things move on so quickly, do you still see that innovation as present? Do you think indies are still making waves as much as they were three or four years ago? 

JC: Yeah, I feel that they are, but perhaps made more by getting onto a more level playing field with bigger publishers, I think, certainly in terms of quality and reputation, but I think that indie publishers - maybe partly as a result of having weathered the pandemic - are being considered, you know, I think we've got to the point of being taken seriously. The choice for an author it’s a more nuanced one. What do authors want? Do they want the name of a big publishing house or do they want the care and the commitment of independent publishers? 
I think maybe that has changed a little bit. But there's a more kind of personal relationship with editors, and also with readers. Yeah, I just think indie publishers are definitely innovative in the work they publish. And I think just looking at some of the major prize shortlists says a lot, particularly in translation and publishers like Fitzcarraldo are setting this incredible example and inspiring lots of other presses and showing what's possible. So yeah, in terms of more sort of innovative ideas, like, I don't know, whether to be with online or subscription models, I don't personally feel that we've been particularly good at that. And I would put that mainly down to the capacity that we're just focusing on getting the books done. But I think in terms of the style of work being published and the quality, yeah, I think indie publishers are still going strong. 

JR: As a bookseller coming through lockdown, I feel like I certainly found that people coming through the doors were more receptive to the suggestions and recommendations of small presses over some of the big publishers and I think there's more of an awareness of where these books are coming from now. 

JC: Yeah, yeah. That's really nice. 

JR: Yeah, and I hope that you find that ripples down to you guys because, you know, you're doing the work. 

JC: Yeah, I think it does. I think that there is a community and a real supportiveness which makes such a huge difference, definitely.

JR: Certainly as an outsider, it seems like you've had such an amazing couple of years. But I wonder, the bigger you become and the more popular Prototype becomes, do you think that it makes it more of a challenge to be at the forefront of innovation and to find those different and more experimental works? 

JC: I don't know. I'll say no, I think it makes it less of a challenge. I think you want to get to a point where people trust your choices and your outputs, and that if there's a kind of consistency of quality, you therefore have a platform in which you can be more daring because people trust the books and they might just buy them, even if they don't know what it is. I think it makes sense to me and I think that allows more freedom. So actually I feel like growing, although you know we've grown and we haven't, we're still tiny in terms of workforce, in terms of our budgets, you know, so we're sort of at a point of needing, wanting and needing to grow a bit and to be able to have more people but not quite there yet. So yeah, there's a balance as well in trying to make choices in taking on some books that do have the potential to sell in greater numbers but then allow us alongside that to do more risky things that might only have 500 regions but that's okay. I think we want to be able to do both. There needs to be a balance of, you know, I definitely still want to do things but even if I know they're just not going to sell that many copies, if I think something is worth publishing and should be published then I still will. So I think, yeah, finding a model that allows you to do that alongside slightly bigger selling things. And yeah, just growing helps that, I think it makes it more possible to do that. 

JR: And again, you mentioned the series design. It's the trust that you build with your readership as well, isn't it? They're so distinctive and quite minimal and quite simplistic but really striking, in a world of of trying to grab people's attention. 

JC: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, sometimes I think, ‘Are these covers not striking enough?’ You go into a bookshop and you see all the colours and crazy designs, but actually, I think because of all that, there's all that emphasis on design, and it's quite over-designed, but actually, the simplicity starts to stand out because it's different to everything else on the table. Colour is good as well. We changed our design from monochrome with illustrations to this colour thing that was partly in response to booksellers saying that the white covers were getting dirty. I think the colour has been a good move. I think it has more of a fun welcoming feel to it, but it's still very simple. 

JR: I think I see that in And Other Stories and Fitzcarraldo, too. 

JC: Yeah, it’s interesting that they've chosen to go that way. 

JR: Yeah, it's stripping back some of the noise to just give you what we need. 

JC: Exactly, focus on the text. 

JR: But, as you say, other than the blue of some of the Fitzcarraldos, And Other Stories and a lot of the white Fitzccaraldos do just get damaged.

JC: Yeah, they do. And then if they get returned, you can't sell them. 

JR: Yeah, exactly. And it just becomes more of an issue on both ends. I know we've already mentioned a couple of indies, but I read somewhere that you were quite inspired by Penned in the Margins back in the day. 

JC: So, Tom Chivers, who founded and ran Penned in the Margins was -  actually we published his poetry collection with Test Center - just a kind of a bit of a mentor, really. He was incredibly helpful and supportive over all the years of Test Centre and then at the beginning of Prototype. And I just really valued his advice. He was at that point a level above us. And then I became a member of his board of trustees and that as well was a really incredibly useful learning experience. And I liked how they combined publishing with lots of live events and that combining of publishing adjacent events, I suppose, I thought was a really interesting model. It was sad that they stopped. You know, it's very, very tough. Tom did have a couple of people, one or two people working with him, but it's a lot to run things on your own. And I think at some point, sometimes you may just want to leave from those pressures. But yeah, I think they did bring lots of brilliant works. 

JR: Yeah, I mean, before we pressed record, I know we were talking about having met for the first time at the Inpress conference. 

JC: Yeah. 

JR: For me as a bookseller, Inpress has been an amazing gateway to some publishers that I've not been aware of and especially with us being geographically a little bit out of that big southern publishing bubble it's been a really great way to experience and select some of these titles that I think otherwise may have been missed. 

How has it been from your perspective being part of Inpress and being on such a great list with other really great small press publishing?

JC: It was actually also Tom who put me in touch with Inpress. I think it's a fantastic community to be a part of. I mean, on a practical level, as a group, we're able to negotiate deals with the software that we as publishing all need to have. So that really helps to have that operating as a group with a negotiating power. But I think the reps and everyone working with Inpress really understand the approach to what their publishers care about, and that really shows in the way that they pitch our books to booksellers. And yeah, being part of a group of publishers, both bigger and smaller, I think we really share our knowledge and support each other and I think that's a huge thing for so many indie publishers, that kind of community and being able to write to people to ask questions when there's something you don't understand. That really does happen a lot with publishers in that group so it's a really good thing to be part of. It’s good to hear from your perspective that the Inpress group has introduced you to new publishers and that it's doing its job well.

JR: Certainly in my role now I spend most of my time looking at what other booksellers are talking about and what they're pushing. I think that the front line of the book industry is crucial for seeing what's just arrived and what people are interested in. I've definitely found some of Prototype’s titles that way, some of which I missed last year and only picked up recently.

JC: Yeah, bookshops are brilliant. I think that the network of independent bookshops is so good and it makes a huge difference when you get them behind one of your books, it really, really affects sales. It may be surprising that one or a couple of bookshops posting a picture of your book will make a difference, but it really does. 

JR: It's kind of mad how it travels through social media. 

JC: Exactly, yeah. It's a social media thing, definitely. But yeah, really, really valuable. And we've now started doing a lot more events at those bookshops. It does feel like there's a network, a kind of map of real shops that people go to who are really supportive. 

JR: I was just about to say, you mentioned already that sense of community with small presses. I think the community with booksellers and small presses has become ever more present. And you get to talk directly to a publisher. In the big wide world of the book industry quite often you'll send an email out to orders@ or sales@ or whatever address that is and then you hope you hear back from them. But when it's such a small business and you're actually talking directly to people behind the books it makes a massive difference. I think you get to build stronger relationships.

JC: Yeah, yeah, it's really good, a positive difference from more commercial publishing, which I think we have to appreciate.

JR: So let us get back to your journey in publishing, then. Can you tell us about House Sparrow Press? I know you co-run that with Gareth Evans.

JC: Yes, so, in the Test Center days we were approached by my now co-founder of House Sparrow Press, Gareth Evans, who was a writer and film curator. He was a film curator at the Whitechapel Gallery for many years. He had a project by and related to the writer John Berger and it was a book called A Sparrow's Journey and it was an essay Berger had written about a Russian writer called Andrey Platonov and a recording of Berger reading this really beautiful short story, a Russian short story in translation, plus this story translated by a fantastic translator called Robert Chandler. I really loved the project but Will [Shutes] wasn't sure that it was quite the right fit for us and I sort of understood that but I really wanted to do it. So Gareth and I said, ‘Well, why don't we just do it as a one-off and we'll call ourselves House Sparrow Press’, which is related to the story. 
And so we did and we did this little tiny book with a CD in it - and that seems a little crazy - but it sold well, we did a limited run and it sold out. And then we just thought, ‘Why don't we do something else?’ 
After that, we did a book with the Canadian novelist Anne Michaels which is now out of print. I'd love to do it again, it's something I'm thinking about. We did a book with Chloe Aridjis, a Mexican writer based in London. And then we did, in 2022, a Derek Jarman book.

Now, House Sparrow is basically a part of Prototype because it seemed completely crazy to try to run two presses. So Gareth is involved with those projects, but it's basically as an imprint and those books have the House Sparrow name on them. I think maybe they have a distinctive style to them, in a sense, but basically, it's just another stand to Prototype. We have another Derek Jarman book coming this autumn, which will be under House Sparrow because it seems to make sense to continue with it, but it is Prototype in terms of the bibliographic data behind it all. It's all as an imprint of Prototype. 

JR: When we met, we did talk a little about the Derek Jarman thing. Could you give us a bit of background about how that came about? 

JC: Yeah, so the Derek Jarman connection, again, this was through Gareth, who is a sort of connector of people. He has been for many years. I first was in touch with him with Test Centre when we did our first-ever record. He just sent us an email and said, ‘Oh, this sounds interesting, let's meet for a coffee.’ And we’ve been friends since then. So he knew Jarman's biographer and his agent who was managing his estate, and Jarman's partner of many years, not his lover, he cared for him when he was dying and they lived in Dungeness together. He wanted somebody to do a facsimile addition of his poetry collection which he’d written in the 70s. He had destroyed a lot of the copies in the end but Keith [Collins], his partner, was very sure and clear that he would have wanted this book to be reissued. I think we were approached in November and it had to come out by the end of January and in time for an anniversary. That was where the agility of being a small publisher was very useful because we just were able to do it because we didn't have any supplier that we had to inform of our publication seven months in advance. It was just, ‘Okay, we'll do it.’ We did it and put it together over the Christmas holiday and then sent it to print and had a big launch at the London Review Bookshop in February. So that happened and we did 700 copies and they sold out pretty quickly and then that was it. We didn't have the money to print anymore or I think we could have carried on but with Test Centre it was like, when it's gone, it's gone. That was our sort of approach, there was something nice in having limited edition things. And then out of that, we were told that there was this other book, a story, and a recording of Jarman reading the story. And we wanted to do it, but there were a few things in the way, I think there was something happening over with Jarman’s artwork, and it just wasn't the right time for Keith to do it, or to sort of discuss it with us. So it kind of went on hold. And then Keith, very suddenly, and very sadly, died four years ago, he had a brain tumour, it was very sad. I went to the estate and just said, ‘I really feel we should do this now, and we'll dedicate the book to Keith.’ 
So we just, we did it, we finally did it, and we invited a few people to write pieces to go with it. And yeah, then the poetry book, we've just been thinking it would be great to get it back in print again, people still email asking about it. So I think if you find a copy on Abe Books or something, it's now hundreds of pounds. So yeah, it took a bit of… I had to sort of argue the case to get the rights back from the estate, but we have them now. So the poetry book will be reissued again in exactly the same facsimile edition, pretty much unchanged, apart from some publication details. And that will be out in November. And it also has a sort of silver shiny cover that was where the idea for the shiny cover that we did. And shiny covers do sell.

JR: They sell well and they'd sell well at Christmas. 

JC: People like it, yeah, it was a good Christmas gift. 

JR: So while we're talking about things coming up and other projects you're working on, I wanted to talk briefly about the Prototype Prize. I know the shortlist was announced fairly recently, is that right? 

JC: So last month [June 2024] we announced the shortlist and in September we'll announce the winners. There are two winners for a book-length and then a short form which will be published by Monitor Books, which is run by my colleague Rory [Cook]. We had the idea for a prize a little while ago and tried initially to get some private funding for it which we did in the end but it's also Arts Council funded and alongside the prize we've set up what we've called a development program which is a kind of a mentoring scheme for eight participants who have not yet had a book published or not yet had a solo exhibition considered. It’s open to people working in different areas of visual art or writing. We partnered with New Writing North on that and we ring-fenced three of the eight places for applicants from the North. It's about a six-month programme, with editorial periods with Rory and I, plus workshops with different people from different areas of the book world, some of the poets, editors, agents, and bookmakers. So we're nearing the end, it will end at the end of August. 
It's been a really great, we've received a lot of applications, I think nearly 600. 

JR: Yeah, I bet!

JC: Yeah, and I'm so happy that we’ve seen an amazing quality of work and a fantastic group of people, so I hope we'll be able to get the funding to repeat it and do it on a bi-annual basis. 

JR: I know you said the winners were announced in September, but are the winners being printed in the anthology, or have I got that mixed up? 

JC: Oh, so no, sorry, the development program participants are all published in the anthology, which is out tomorrow [Wednesday 10 July 2024], and then actually a lot of this new anthology is work that we read while choosing people for the development. Because we've seen so much good work, and we couldn't offer everyone a place, but we wrote to about, I don't know, 15 of them and said, ‘Would you like to contribute? We love your work.’ So yeah, that's been quite a nice thing. 

JR: Which is just another brilliant thing that you've kind of got ticking over in the background. 

JC: Yeah, it's a nice thing to do, I think. 

JR: And it's a nice way of coming full circle from Test Center, I think, a nice way of kind of keeping that going. 

JC: Definitely, it’s quite a lot of work, anthologies always are, but it feels like an important thing to keep going with. 

JR: In another way of coming full circle from Test Center, I was wondering if there was anything you learned along the way from running Test Center that's very much still at the heart of what you're doing now, or something that you're taking forward into the future. 

JC: Yeah. Let me think. It's a good question. I'm not sure if I have a good answer. I think the importance of relationships with authors is really important. I think that was key to Test Centre and it is for Prototype too and is what we know one of the really important things about being a small publisher is those relationships they build. ​

 I think communities and events, although this year we actually haven't had as many events as normal because the authors have been not in the country. But yeah, that sense of community, I think, can open this address with something that's carried over.

JR: What I normally try and do is close these by talking about books, it's obviously why we’re all here. Now, we’ve been really excited to see some of your recent releases out in the world, especially The Seers [Sulaiman Addonia], which is fantastic, but also The Earth is Falling [Carmen Pellegrino], which I loved as well. But going even just back into last year with Amy Arnold and Helen Palmer, too, they've been really great successes for you. 

JC: Yeah, I think we've had really strong fiction. Last year's novels all did really, really well, and so Amy Arnold [Lori & Joe] was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and it had to be reprinted. Jen Calleja [Vehicle], and Helen Palmer’s [Pleasure Beach] are both now in their second reprints, and they both did lots of events, and I think Jen and Helen's books in particular were really good examples of there being a kind of appetite for books that might seem risky and experimental in their form. I think it was really satisfying to see how much people loved them and that any sense of them being difficult was just sort of totally irrelevant. That's not how people received them at all. They were really loved, which was great. And yeah, I think last year was a nice mix of poetry with the Bhanu Kapil, the reissue of Bhanu Kapil's book [Incubation: a space for monsters], which was fantastic. It's an amazing work and also has got us thinking more about reissuing out-of-print books or things that haven't been published in [the UK] but that fit really well nonetheless. So we've got a poetry collection coming up in the autumn by Sascha Akhtar, which is called The Grimoire of Grimalkin and it was published by Salt originally but has also been out of print for a long time. We're doing that again and really excited about it. So finding these things that are no longer available, but which we believe in and feel are a good fit, is something that we'll be doing more of or are continuing to do. I think it's quite nice to have a bit of fun. 

JR: I can see, is it Ahren in September as well? 

JC: Yeah, Ahren Warner. So Ahren, who is primarily known as a poet, his collections have all been published by Bloodaxe Books. We published, in fact, right at the beginning of lockdown, we had our first Arts Council grant that was looking into disciplinary writing and we published a sort of pamphlet book, a big pamphlet by him, which was a combining of flash film and still images and text. And this is the next book in a sort of continuing project, in a way, a novella and a photo book that will also be tied to an exhibition. So keeping that strand of visual work going feels important and nicely timed around the announcing of the winners of the prize. So yeah, that's coming in September at the same month as Sascha's poetry. And then we have a really exciting poetry collection in October by our Lebanese-Palestinian, Australian-based poet called Hasib Hourani called rock flight. Which is also coming out with New Directions in America and Giramondo Publishing in Australia. So that's exciting. And then the Jarman. So I think the autumn is a nice mix of things, poetry heavy, which is nice, having had lots of fiction. Yeah, that's the autumn, a real range of things. 

JR: Yeah and it seems as though I mean you know from an outsider's perspective it almost looks like you're going up a gear in terms of productivity as well I don't know if it feels that way on your end.

JC: I think, yeah, we're still getting 10 books a year. Which between the two of us is a lot and about all we can manage at the moment. I think it's, you know, the more and more interesting projects that come our way, there's so much that we want to be able to do, so trying to get that balance between doing all the things you want but not taking on too much is quite tricky. I think there's a sort of momentum that grows and it's hard to stop and then you need to go with it to a degree, otherwise, it might appear that you're stopping or, I don't know, once you've got a certain pace of things going, it's maybe good to keep that up. 

JR: Have you got time to breathe over the Christmas period or have you more lined up? 

JC: We tend to not have things out in December because I think that's when not our kind of books are the ones that get all the shop space. January also, we've got nothing out in January. But then next year is just very full already. The first thing will be a novel translated from German by a Hungarian-born Swiss-based German language author called Zsuzsanna Gahse, translated by Katy Derbyshire who’s a fantastic translator. That's called Mountainish. And so we're doing more and more work in translation actually. We are doing two books at the same time by the American writer Kate Zambreno, again these are books that have already been out, they were both published by Semiotext(e) at the moment and we're doing the first UK editions. She feels like an excellent fit for us. So those will come out at the same time, they're sort of companion pieces. And yeah, we have more things in translation, a debut poetry collection, the prize-winning publication. So yeah, it’ll definitely be another ten-book year.

JR: Is there a particular reason behind this lean towards more translation? I mean, I think the market is calling for more, as a reader, it seems that there are more and more people searching out fiction in translation in particular. 

JC: Yep, definitely. I suppose you would just be missing out on good things if you didn't open up the possibility of [publishing] translation. I think there's so much excellent work and trying to find things from other countries that fit with the kind of things we're interested in just feels like an exciting thing to do. I think also thinking kind of practically there is funding from other countries for the translation process and also occasionally towards production so it can make it a, financially, slightly less risky thing to do. And yeah I think that independent publishers have been doing a lot of amazing work with translation and it feels good to be part of that so that it can be a platform where you can really have success by bringing books that have done incredibly well elsewhere but not found readers in English yet. There's sort of potential to find things that really do well. 

JR: Yeah and how have you found the process of working with translated texts? Obviously, it's an extra string to your bow but I mean are you having to outsource a lot of the translation? 

JC: Yeah, so we've been working with one of our authors, actually, who's a poet and translator called Astrid Alben. During COVID, I asked her if she'd be interested in helping me find things to publish in translation because I know that she's sort of more inside that world than I am. So she's been doing a lot of the finding of works through conversations and now people are approaching us. I think it would have been too much to do completely alone, or just again because of the capacity, and we've then always applied for funding, it's sort of dependent on funding, so we won't go ahead with any translations without funding. We just couldn't afford that. So we applied to the relevant countries’ Arts Councils, and to English PEN, they've also been very supportive, and then try to have all of our translation costs covered, plus extra where we can. And then find translators, often authors have a preferred translator, so the decision’s kind of been made for you. Or, like with this Mountainish book that's coming out this year, we knew of Katy and wrote to her and she said, ‘I hate mountains’ and we said, ‘Don't worry, it's not really, it’s a book in praise of mountains’, and she loved it. So yeah, approaching people. Again, Katy also runs her own publisher [V&Q Books]. I think they're doing fewer books now but I knew her through Inpress. We met through Inpress. So that helped, being able to make the approach. So yeah, I think, again, there is a nice network which allows you to introduce people and to allow people to want to take projects on. 
And with translation, there are very clear guidelines about payment and rates. So we just follow all the guidelines and make sure [translators] are paid at the industry standard. There's been a learning experience in working out contracts and royalties and making sure that everything is fair on the support of the translation as far as we're able to in regard to our budgets. 

JR: And do you find yourself reading a lot of fiction in translation? 

JC: No, I wish, I speak, strangely, I speak Norwegian because my partner is Norwegian, but that's it, so we rely on other people. I wish I could read widely in other languages, that would make a huge difference, but it's often translators who get in touch with a proposal and we base it on that. 

JR: And what do you gravitate towards when you're not working, what do you like to read for pleasure? 

JC: What do I like to read? Well, at the moment with two small children, I do very little reading that is not work-related. 

JR: Yeah, sure!

JC: But yeah, I might not have a good answer. Right now, I'm reading Kaliane Bradley's book, The Ministry of Time, because we did our degrees together. So I've been excited to read that. It's so much work-related at the moment. Maybe you won’t want to include this answer!

JR: Ha! Well, to be honest, this is this is the answer I get most often. I think it's not surprising and to be honest It was a slightly loaded question because I thought that would be your answer and it's very normal. I think you've got so much going on and you're always kind of all in everyone in publishing is working so far ahead. 

How much of the submission reading do you do yourself and how much are you able to share that out? 

JC: All of it. 

JR: All of it, wow, okay. 

JC: Yeah, yeah, along with Rory. It's so much nicer to have somebody to talk through things with, I think just to sort of feel more secure in your judgment and be able to discuss things. So that's a huge help. I mean, there'll be some things that will sort of split between us and say whether the other should read it. I think anything that one of us is interested in we’ll both look at which is really nice. But yeah, there's no one else, there's no one else doing reading. 

JR: Sure, sure. And I guess that's quite reassuring, as an outsider, it's knowing that that level of consistency is going to be there in terms of submissions and things. 

JC: Yeah, definitely. 

JR: As a bookseller and a reader, I generally see things maybe up to two years after you have. So, I was just wondering if, because you've got your open submissions, you've obviously got your anthology, you are seeing any trends or any hints at what might be coming up in the future. 

JC: Hmm interesting. I think I'm wondering if perhaps I'm seeing more and more narrative poetry collections or quite often they get the term ‘verse-novel’, I think this is becoming more and more of a thing both because more and more poets are writing fiction but also the idea of poetry collections that have a narrative and also book-length poems. I think that the Hasib Hourani book we're doing in the autumn would come under that. And we received some other recent submissions that I think would fit into that. We also get quite a lot of illustrated or works combining imaging text which is interesting. I think it's very hard to do well but when it works it's exciting. 

JR: Yeah, interesting. I can definitely see that there's an appetite for that already. You've already mentioned your kids, are you ever tempted to look into kids' illustration or do you ever see children’s titles as something that might feed into the Prototype of the future? 

JC: Interesting. So we have published one children's poetry book, which came out just before COVID. I think it was the last launch we had before lockdown. That was by a sort of, it's an alphabet poem book, so appropriate for the alphabet, with collage illustrations and co-written by poet Emily Critchley and another poet, called Michael Kindellan [alphabet poem: for kids!]. And I really loved the book and the proposal was sort of passed on to me by a poet who I love. And it was tricky to market. I think it's a lovely book. But I think to really build a leadership for children's literature, you have to really dedicate yourself to it and I think it maybe came across as slightly too random to put this children's book in our output. 
So I think at the moment, no, because I think it would require a commitment to doing more. And I think we have too many other things to focus on at the moment and kind of get better at. 
So not for now, but I like the idea. But I also think, you know, it's a different world, it's a different market. And I don't think I know anything about it apart from through buying books for my children. So yeah, probably not for now. 

Check out all that Jess and Prototype are up to by browsing their website and take a look at their exciting list of new titles coming this year and next. Make sure to also support their authors by seeing which events might be coming to a bookshop or venue near you!