There are four of us running Dodo Ink – novelist Sam Mills, book blogger Thom Cuell, marketing whizz Alex Spears, and our rather louche Sobranie-smoking pet Dodo. 

 

 

We decided to set up an indie press about a year ago. There were a number of reasons for our decision. We’re all passionate book readers and we’d noticed that the majority of the books we were reading and loving were being published by indie presses, from Lightning Rods by Helen Dewitt to F by Daniel Kehlmann to Zone by Mathias Enard to Randall by Jonathan Gibbs. We were also in possession of a fantastic book to launch our list with; a strange ghost story called The Eleventh Letter by Tom Tomaszewski. Tom is a psychotherapist who has previously written and reviewed for The Indy on Sunday. He’d emailed me his book to see what I thought and I’d read it in one weekend, drawn into its dreamy, surreal energy. I tried to help him find an agent for it but, whilst they praised his prose and imagination, they felt it would be impossible to sell to a publisher, for it didn’t fit into any neat category. The Eleventh Letter is a glorious muddle of genres – a ghost story, a love story, a crime novel, an exploration of madness and memory. It seemed a terrible shame that such a fine book was never going to find a readership. And so we took the plunge, told Tom we’d publish his book, and Dodo Ink was born.

 

Earlier in the year, one of the Bookseller headlines for the London Book Fair was “Literary fiction is dead!” Whilst this headline is rather sensationalist, it suggests that publishers have become more wary of publishing books without a commercial hook, quirky books that don’t fit into a box, books that are mad, bad and risky to publish. Since launching Dodo, we certainly haven’t had to strive to find good books that we want to publish. They are plenty around (either agented or otherwise), books that haven’t managed to make it through the acquisitions meetings at the big presses because they’re not written by an author with a ‘profile’ (i.e. a celebrity) or don’t fit with a current trend. A few years ago I remember reading an interview with the Pulitzer-winning Jennifer Egan, where she was asked what the biggest obstacle to getting published was. Her reply was, “Writing a good book.” We’ve come to have an inkling of what she meant by this...

 

We’ve decided to publish around three–four books a year and our first titles are launching in 2016. A small list seemed a good idea, because it gives a chance to publish each book with sufficient enthusiasm and energy. We’re an indie press but we want to give each book the big treatment. In recent, recession-averse times bigger publishers have been known to put out a dozen titles in a month, wait to see what starts to take off and then back it. We don’t want to adopt this sort of strategy. We want to give each book full support before it takes off, because we’re proud to publish our authors and want them to be read as widely as possible.

 

Galley Beggar is one of the indie presses who have been an inspiration to us over the past few years, as well as And Other Stories, Peirene Press and Fitzcarraldo. These are indie presses that you can trust; you can buy a book from them by an unknown author and know you’re in for a literary treat. We hope that in years to come we can offer the same to our readers – the promise that when they invest in a Dodo Ink book, it will be original, different, daring and a damn fine read.

 

When we announced the launch of Dodo Ink, we were delightfully surprised by how warm the response was. Two months ago, we were even more touched when we launched a kickstarter and the pledges started to flow in. We set ourselves a target of £8000, gave ourselves seven weeks to raise it, created some goodies for readers (free books, bookmarks, Dodo quills and so on) and hoped we wouldn’t find ourselves stuck on an embarrassing 0% at the end. At the time of writing this piece, we are very nearly at our target amount. We’ve been so grateful to receive support from friends and family and complete strangers. We’ve had numerous people tell us that they decided to pledge after checking out our website (www.dodoink.com), and reading the extracts of our forthcoming novels. All of us are working for Dodo for free, supporting ourselves with paid work; every penny of our kickstarter is going to our authors and their books, on their covers, proof copies and marketing. We’d be very grateful if you’d contribute – any sum, small or big, will be gratefully received.

 

NOTE: Just after this blog piece was finished, the Dodo Ink kickstarter hit £8000 and 100% of its goal. However, there are still plenty of goodies on offer, from Dodo sketches to your name printed in the back of the book. With four days to go, we’re still grateful for any pledges, tweets or help – thank you!

 

 

F by Daniel Kehlman (Quercus)

The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall (Canongate)

Zone by Mathias Énard (Fitzcarraldo)

Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt (And Other Stories)

Remainder by Tom McCarthy (Alma Books)