For each new subscription now, we pledge to donate 20% of the price to the bookshop of your choice / where you would normally buy books. Just add a note when you purchase – or let us know after when you receive your subscription email.
[UPDATE: 11th August: after running this donation programme since March, we have now closed it. Unfortunately, it’s not financially sustainable for us to make the donations forever. Thank you everyone for your support for us and bookshops these past five months.]
Hello friends,
We wanted to let you know that we’re selling books direct again on our site! And to remind you about our bookshop-donation pledge: a way that we, you and bookshops can work together to make sure there are still great bookshops & great new books being made when this difficult time is over.
Apart from that, what is our news? We are working hard to make sure we support our new books. With absolutely impeccable timing, of course, we managed to spend the last two years preparing for this spring’s list, which we envisioned as our biggest season yet. Times are tough, but we’re heartened to see our new books finding readers.
And we continue all the behind-the-scenes work: royalties calculated & paid, future books typeset; new books acquired & freelancers hired. We’re keeping focused. We know sales will be lower than usual and cash tight but we’re grateful to the support of Arts Council England and all our subscribers & book buyers.
Direct Sales
In response to the regular news about books retailers and wholesalers’ disrupted or discontinued service, we took the decision to go back to our roots: just like in the first days of And Other Stories we’ve set up a home office, with stock, mailing supplies, the works. A little And Other Stories attic bookshop!
You Subscribe, We Donate: A Donation Pledge for every New Subscription
We know bookshops have a massive crisis right now too. So when the COVID-19 crisis started we decided to donate the margin we make on our subscriptions sales (ie what’s normally left after the direct costs of the subscription sale are paid). In simple terms: 20% of the subscription price. Find out more & subscribe here:
https://www.andotherstories.org/subscriptions/
We also encourage you, as we also write in all our books, to continue to buy from the often unsung heroes of publishing, real booksellers.
Ways to Support Independent Bookshops & Publishing:
We’ve already heard of bookshops that have seen no option but to close for now and let staff go temporarily. Other bookshops remain open for online orders and deliveries. So please get in touch with your local bookshop that is still doing postal deliveries, when you want to order physical copies of books.
Where to Find and Buy with Independent Bookshops
A list of UK booksellers here: https://www.booksellers.org.uk/bookshopsearch
US booksellers here: https://www.indiebound.org/indie-bookstore-finder
Online author events, starting with Barn 8
We’re going to be asking our authors and translators to record very short readings from their books that we’ll host on our website, our Youtube channel and social media – so even those of you who couldn’t have made it to events will now be able to hear our authors (front and backlist) reading from their work. We’re also going to host some live online Q&As and e-launches and will keep you posted on these on our social media channels and in our monthly newsletter. You can watch the e-launch here on Youtube of our latest book, Barn 8. It is launched with a lovely, wide-ranging conversation between its author Deb Olin Unferth direct from her home and the launch host, Sam of Burley Fisher bookshop, London.
And last of all, a note about joy: try to block out the noise and make time for it every day – be it in the form of copying out a poem to send in a letter, taking time to relax with a book, or a video call with a loved one over a glass of wine. Take good care, all of you!
the And Other Stories team