The price of success

When Galley Beggar Press posted a desperate plea for financial support on Gofundme yesterday, it underlined a cruel irony of the book trade: rather than generating much-needed revenue as you might expect, publishing a book that wins (or indeed is nominated for) a major award can actually put small independent publishers in financial peril.

Galley Beggar's plight perversely owed everything to the appearance on the Booker shortlist of Lucy Ellmann's novel Ducks, Newburyport - something that should have been the cause for unalloyed celebration. As a consequence of the nomination, however, they had to promptly design a hardback edition and supply The Book People with 8,000 copies, for which they would be recompensed to the tune of £40,000 - "a sizeable undertaking" for a small company, but nevertheless "part of the schedule and the competition". Then, when it was announced that The Book People had slid into administration, Galley Beggar were left staring into the abyss - hence the urgency of the request for donations.

Their experience will be familiar to another publisher closer to home, Seren Books. Scooping the Costa Poetry Award in 2006 (with John Haynes' Letters To Patience) and again in 2014 (with Jonathan Edwards' My Family And Other Superheroes) brought the Bridgend-based imprint considerable attention and acclaim - but it also threw up a lot of challenges and came at a significant cost.

Galley Beggar's tale has a happy ending, at least: their plea was shared far and wide, and met with such extraordinary public munificence that they raised the £40,000 within the day. But other blameless victims of The Book People's collapse - and of the conditions attached to major prizes, so blatantly disproportionately burdensome for independents - may not be so fortunate.