Winner of the British Book Awards Small Publisher Press of the Year, Fly on The Wall Press is the brainchild of author, editor and publisher, Isabelle Kenyon. Fly On The Wall will be at Manchester Central Library for The Northern Publisher Fair on Saturday April 26th. Literature and Culture MA student Keeley Banton caught up with Isabelle to find out more.
Q: What motivated you in taking the leap from writing your own poetry, to setting up Fly On The Wall?
It wasn’t a conscious choice. In 2017, I’d started performing my work at Open Mic nights in Guildford but wanted to work with other writers, so I joined Twitter and Goodreads and formed communities in the US, as well as in the UK and Ireland. At the time, to unite people, I put a call out on my blog for contributions to a mental health anthology, Please Hear What I’m Not Saying, for the charity Mind. We’ve changed a lot since then, but it was a case of learning how to put together an anthology and distribute internationally from the start. We fundraised a lot for Mind, which was fantastic, whilst forming a community, so people asked when the next one would be.
It was a really enjoyable experience so in 2018, we put together a second anthology, Persona Non Grata, about social exclusion and homelessness; this time we collaborated with Crisis Aid UK and Shelter. We expanded our audience, went into warehousing and did a launch event for this anthology, so I officially recognised to myself that I had become a publisher.
In 2019, I put a call out for individual writers, and that’s when we started with just poetry collections in the first year, before branching out into the current models which we have now. So, Fly on The Wall publish novels, short story collections, poetry, and we have our anthologies, which is what we’re known for from that first year.
Q: You’ve mentioned the collaborative approach with charities; is that something that you’re still keen to pursue?
Yes, we link to a lot of charities; the main ones are WWF and Amnesty International. We have the anthologies, which work best for charity, although some of our writers ask for their royalties either to be split or entirely donated to charity, depending on what they’re passionate about.
Q: Where did the name Fly on The Wall came from?
It came from the idea of sitting in a coffee shop, ear-wigging on what people are saying and observing what people are like from a dialogue or mannerisms perspective. The idea is to create authentic narratives; as writers, we’re always stealing things from people around us.
Q: In the current edition of The Bookseller, there’s an article on the rise of alternative book fairs, and The Northern Publishers’ Fair – which you established – is mentioned; why do you think independent fairs are so important now?
A lot of publishers rely upon fairs for a cash injection perhaps because direct orders via their websites are declining. I don’t know if that’s just because we spend more time in bookshops than we did during COVID, or maybe it’s because publishers don’t implement discounts, unlike retailer sites.
Also, you do form relationships at fairs; you can get people to sign up to your newsletter. I started the Northern Publishers’ Fair in 2019 because I found attending a fair in London to be quite expensive and impersonal. Even recently, I was at a London-based fair and despite having just won the Northern Small Press of the Year at the British Book Awards, there was a sense of not being known as we’re from the North. So originally, I wanted to have a more personal experience where people could network properly without the unnecessary expenditure (and exhaustion) of travelling to the South.
Q: Having written non-fiction specifically focused on giving a real insight into the world of publishing and writing, it seems that it’s important for you to pass the torch on to budding creatives. So, what do think you’d have really benefited from knowing when you started out?
Something that I’m still learning now is to trust my own intuition, which I’m only really doing lately. But as soon as I listen to what I think will be good, it’s never really been wrong. As a non-funded publisher, I have to be fairly risk-averse but I would tell myself to do the warehouse earlier; invest earlier; be cheeky and reach out to journalists earlier because it’s not the case that these people don’t want to hear from you, even when you’re small. So, I would definitely advise people to trust their own instincts.
Q: Can you tell us more about publishing political fiction with a view to driving social change. How do you stand out amongst other publishers?
When you say the word political, sometimes people turn off, they think that it’s going to be didactic but it’s not. We want our books to be accessible; to have a balance with some escapism.
A big focus for us this year is climate fiction/novels and we like high literary quality, which is plot based and exciting. For example, The Wager and the Bear by John Ironmonger, which was released on February 21st, is already in its third print run. It’s a fun novel, but there’s the challenge of getting people to pick it up because it’s about climate change. So, we created a lovely cover with a cosy feel to it and people who know Ironmonger’s work are familiar with the fictional Cornish village of St. Perrin as he bases a lot of his issue-based works there, so there’s the cosiness of the familiar characters filtering through his work. Also, we created A3 cardboard polar bears from the cover that have invaded lots of bookshop windows and just made it a fun product that people could get excited by whilst engaging with the key issues as Ironmonger tours Cornwall. However, we have a book about AIDS in the 90s in Eswatini and that’s more difficult; you have to almost win a prize to get people across the world talking about such difficult issues because we’re not always ready to read about them.
Q: There’s so much that you publish that’s challenging or thought-provoking but in an appealing way, like in the beautiful book bundles that you put together.
That’s the hope when you do a bundle because some books will always get more love than others; either just because people prefer covers or because they don’t know certain authors. Interestingly, our short fiction sells well for us, in contrast to the wider industry; our audience trust us with recommending works.
Sometimes an author comes in with a different audience and that’s an interesting journey for us to go on as we’re going to be working with new people and building new trusts. If the audience know your ethos, they’ll have an idea of whether they like it or not, but it only takes one book for them to be put off.
Q: As a trailblazer in publishing, you’ve already achieved so much… what’s next for you?
I’m currently creating a module called ‘21st Century Publishing’ for Arts University Bournemouth. It’s an online MA which is exciting because I can build the publishers of the future and maybe scare some creative writing students because they’re going to be learning about publishing in only eight weeks and they’re going to produce a book at the end of it, so it will be quite a whistle stop tour.
We’ve also got a lot of exciting books coming out this year and I’m pretty sure we’re going to buy something in translation, which will be very new for us. It’s going to be an interesting journey, especially considering the discussion of trust with the readers; will they trust us to bring a novel from an unknown author in India or Slovenia or Africa… wherever it is?
Q: What should be looking out for from Fly on The Wall this year?
A: In September, we’ll release the feminist fantasy Witchborne by Rachel Grosvenor. We first published her debut The Finery in 2023, and it had a lovely review in the Guardian, which was the first time we’d been in there. Grosvenor’s writing is interesting because it’s soft fantasy/magical realism and it incorporates themes like a 100-year-old woman bringing down the government, so age is not a problem!
Witchborne is a coming-of-age tale about a young woman who is an unnatural mother. She has the gift of being able to touch fire without being burnt which she must hide from people; ultimately, you must decide for yourself whether there are witches or if that’s just the way that society sees the widows and young mums who have these unnatural gifts. At the same time, there’s an uprising with the government that you never see, but there’s very much a sense of religion and control in it. Grosvenor is such an interesting voice; it’s her third book now and it’s been lovely to continue developing her work.
Q: If you could only save one book for the world, what would it be?
Inkheart by Cornelia Funk.
Q: Three words/phrases that describe what you look for when you open a new submission.
Political focus, quirky sense of voice and empathy.
Q: What quality, above all, does someone working in publishing need to have?
Resilience or tenacity? A lot of that, I feel.
Q: Three words/phrases that describe what you love about the North.
Grittiness. Friendly. Great sense of humour.
Q: Who is your favourite character in fiction?
I’ve recently read Cleopatra and Frankenstein, by Coco Mellors and Cleo is such an interesting character because she’s so quirky and alone; she reminds me of a Sally Rooney character.