GRITSTONE CO-OPERATIVE
Andrew Bibby on a more communal approach to publishing
Publishing has changed radically in recent years , and an industry which was once strongly editorial-led has increasingly become much more focused on marketing . When pitching a potential new title , you ’ ll be expected not only to explain what you want to say in your text but also how you expect your book can be marketed . What other existing successful titles will your book resemble ? How do you intend to promote your book yourself ?
At the same time , the �inancial rewards for authors have been shrinking . The regular Society of Authors survey of authors ’ income makes depressing reading . In 2006 , median author earnings were £ 12,330 . In 2022 , the median had fallen to £ 7,000 .
So perhaps the alternative of selfpublishing should no longer be seen as inevitably a second-best option . E- book publishing , in particular , is now extremely straightforward and can be a low-cost way for authors to �ind an audience .
The seven of us in Gritstone Publishing Co-operative have been developing a hybrid solution to the challenge . We are all professional writers , writing variously about the outdoors , landscape , the countryside and natural history , and all of us as it happens have had books which we have written for mainstream publishers . ( Several of us are also committed OWPG members , too !). What we are doing through Gritstone is a form of collective self-publishing , where our books come out bearing the common Gritstone imprint and are marketed and sold on our central Gritstone website
We began in 2016 when two of us were walking back to catch our trains in Manchester following a regional Society of Authors meeting , and when we began discussing whether a cooperative publishing option was an idea worth exploring . Now , seven years on , we have just published our eighteenth title and have two more titles coming out in the Spring – both incidentally very strong titles . Gritstone has built up something of a reputation for the quality of our books – all are produced to the sort of professional standard you ’ d expect of any publisher and we would challenge anyone to guess that they were in fact self-published . We use one of the main trade distributors for outdoors books , Cordee , and our books also reach the book trade through the main book wholesaler Gardners . We also like to make much of the fact that we are so far Britain ’ s only author-run publishing co-op ( though there are similar co-ops in other countries ).
Our two forthcoming titles are typical of our list . Eileen Jones is following up her very successful how parkrun changed our lives with a sequel designed for what ’ s being called parkrun tourism (!), p is for parkrun , a journey from A-Z , while Chris Goddard has the �irst of what will be a comprehensive walker ’ s guide in �ive volumes to the English Coast Path also appearing in time for Spring walks .
Other Gritstone books which might be mentioned include OWPG Golden Eagle award-winner Colin Speakman ’ s recent biography of pioneering geologist John Phillips , Andrew Bibby ’ s Back Roads through Middle England ( OWPG Outdoor Book of the Year in 2018 ), Laurence Rose ’ s Framing Nature : Conservation and Culture , and Andrew McCloy ’ s fascinating social history of Peak District Pubs .
12 outdoor focus / spring 2023