Carcanet Press has been supported for many years by Arts Council England. The nature of the relationship has changed from the more personal connection it was possible to have in the 1970s with the Literature Directors to the regionally devolved connection with ACE officers; and from fairly straightforward applications to the more comprehensive and demanding sets of papers that are now required – at least on a four-year basis, as Carcanet has been a Portfolio Organisation, with annual interim reports. An extract from Carcanet’s narrative in one such report, in a year of worldwide financial upheaval, shows the impact of external factors on a small literary publisher, and its business concerns. There was plenty of material about Carcanet’s successes in this report, but its stated anxieties, as quite a mature organisation, are revealing.
c) 2008/09 funding year and beyond
In addition, please summarise in no more than 1,000 words:
A. issues for 2008/09 programme
The chief issues facing us in 2008/09 relate to the uncertainty of the economy. Already fuel price rises are affecting the cost of paper; we have notice from our rep force that a £30 premium per month will need to be levied against the sheer rise in petrol prices; the steep rise in rents reported threatens the survival of many independent booksellers, a sector which we have been cultivating and which once more delivers almost a third of our UK trade turnover. In these circumstances the improvements we have achieved in our margins may prove hard to sustain.
There is also a decline in anthology publication in the current year which is reflected in a decline in subsidiary rights income, a situation which may persist into the following year.
The continued very high rate of poetry production from the smaller presses eats into the market and into review and feature space. Only the quality of our books, and the general perception of that quality, will make it possible for us to remain in a position of strength and growth. We feel that editorially and in terms of staff we can weather what looks like being a difficult year or more.
As last year, we are concerned by the continued, accelerating erosion of copyright vis-à-vis traditional territories and also vis-à-vis the internet. The erosion of exclusive copyright areas has rendered Carcanet vulnerable. Given the position of sterling, US editions are cheaper worldwide, including in the UK, and US editions are increasingly finding their way into our exclusive markets damaging our sales here, especially when US editions appear before Carcanet editions. Scheduling, sharp pricing and alert policing are required. We must also continue strict control of output and constant attention to margins.
B. outline plans and objectives for 2009/10 and beyond including any plans to apply for Grants for the Arts. You should highlight any changes in your activity or operations that would affect your future programme
Primarily, we recognise that our chief ongoing challenge is to balance creative aspirations with commercial reality.
Our plans and objectives for 2009/10 onward are to continue with our excellent editorial programme, publish new writers from a wide range of backgrounds, and honour our substantial commitment to the writers we are already nurturing. We intend as much as possible to maintain margins and to improve further our financial performance.
PN Review digitisation is being pursued and by the end of 2010 the whole run from 1972 to the present will be electronically archived and available to subscribers.
We are keeping pace, within our means and abilities, with the development of e-book technology and when expedient we will begin to create an income stream from this source.
Our website applications have improved and we intend at last to implement Onix [XML standard metadata formatting for the book trade] during the current year.
We will continue to produce PN Review for its strong committed subscribership and a steady sale through booksellers via Central Books. Its publication and gradual growth will continue, with special focus on new poets from a variety of cultures and on developing readership abroad.
We do not have any plans to apply for Grants for the Arts in the near future. The company has recognised, however, the need to continue upgrading and developing IT resources and will seek to do this through efficiency savings and increased earnings.
C. any other issues you wish to discuss with us
We would be very glad if, over this year, the reporting requirements and the terms of reports for all those clients in our sector could be harmonised so that significant statistics (anonymised if necessary) on stock turn and valuation, unit sales, turnover levels, pricing etc could be generally understood. At present we are not sure against what criteria we are to judge our own performance, and the sooner there is an agreed set of auditing protocols for reporting, the sooner we will understand the sector at large and our place within it.
Valentine Ackland, Journey From Winter: selected poems, edited by Frances Bingham
Sujata Bhatt, Pure Lizard
Alison Brackenbury, Singing in the Dark
Dan Burt, Searched For Text
Austin Clarke, Collected Poems, edited by R. Dardis Clarke
Gillian Clarke, At the Source: a writer’s year
Peter Davidson, The Palace of Oblivion
John F. Deane, A Little Book of Hours
Elaine Feinstein, The Russian Jerusalem: a novel
John Gallas, The Book with Twelve Tales
Jon Glover, Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Grey Gowrie, Third Day: new and selected poems
Jorie Graham, Sea Change
Kelly Grovier, A Lens in the Palm
William Hazlitt, Liber Amoris, edited by Gregory Dart
Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Poems: Song and The Orchard
Frank Kuppner, Arioflotga
Pierre Martory, The Landscapist: selected poems, translated by John Ashbery
John Masefield, Reynard the Fox, edited by Philip Errington
Chris McCully, Old English Poems and Riddles
Gerry McGrath, A to B
Charlotte Mew, Selected Poems, edited by Eavan Boland
Christopher Middleton, Collected Poems
Robert Minhinnick, King Driftwood
Mervyn Peake, Collected Poems, edited by Robert Warner Maslen
Frederic Raphael, Ticks and Crosses: Personal Terms IV
John Redmond, MUDe
Lynette Roberts, Diaries, Letters, and Recollections, edited by Patrick McGuinness
Stephen Rodefer, Call it Thought: selected poems
Stephen Romer, Yellow Studio
James Sutherland Smith, Popeye in Belgrade Jeffrey Wainwright, Clarity or Death!
Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw
Sylvia Townsend Warner, New Collected Poems, edited by Claire Harman