Inspiration! Ever heard of Blue Moose Publishing?

[Pamela Jo]

I loved reading their manifesto. Maybe you will too.

Bluemoose Books Manifesto​

Welcome to Bluemoose Books.
We’re an independent publisher based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. We started publishing great stories a few years back because we were sick and tired of seeing celebrity books everywhere. I have nothing personal against members of the extended royal family putting pen to paper and telling me what the best way to dress a radish is or television presenters who, having finished their careers on the mid-morning sofa, then decide that we the deserving reader will benefit from their novel writing skills.
What I do have issue with is that you the reader, have very few chances to read new and exciting books by great new writers because most of the publishing pie is given over to orange headed celebrities. And don’t talk to me about advances! The advances given to them are in the gazillions, the marketing and advertising spend is also in the gazillion, and subsequently the slice of the pie for new writers just gets smaller and smaller. As one buyer for a major library supplier told me when I asked what the bigger publishers were doing these days, his reply:

‘They’re just publishing STUFF’.

At Bluemoose our aim is to publish cracking stories that engage and inspire.
The corporate and conglomerate nature of publishing these days means that the BIG publishers have different sensibilities in their approach to publishing. They have to satisfy the demands of the shareholder who requires double digit growth year on year. The only way they deem this possible is to get NAMES onto their books because NAMES receive more column inches and shelf space than new writers. Some of it works and they have bestsellers, most of it doesn’t, and they don’t. Why do they do this? Well, they have become so risk averse, they are merely following trends and aping what they think will work because it has worked before, for another publisher.
Literature is nothing if it doesn’t invest in new writing. When a book is published I personally drive our authors around to all of the library events and festivals our writers appear at. It is part of the Bluemoose ethos. We are a family of readers and writers. We nurture, encourage and promote our writers, because we don’t just invest money into their books, we invest time and energy making their stories the best they can possibly be, so that you, the reader receive the best book possible.

The Strokeability Test​

We spend a lot of time on design and our production values matter because we want our books to be more than just objects. The jackets have to be striking and impart a dramatic question. A recent study by The Booksellers Association states that a book cover has a fifth of a second, that’s 0.2 of a second to catch the casual browsers eye. Jackets have to be dramatic. We have found that readers pick up our books, touch, feel and then stroke them too. If we pass the strokeability test, we know our designers have done their job and once they read the first page, hopefully they will be hooked enough to buy the book.

Independent Growth​

Three of our authors, all debut novelists, Anna Chilvers, Mark A Radcliffe and Michael Stewart have had their books, FALLING THROUGH CLOUDS, GABRIEL’S ANGEL and KING CROW published in Russian.
FALLING THROUGH CLOUDS by Anna Chilvers was published by CENTERPOLYGRAPH of Moscow in October 2012. GABRIEL’S ANGEL by Mark A Radcliffe and KING CROW by Michael Stewart will see their books published this spring by AZBOOKA-‐ATTICUS of St Petersburg, the Russian publishing arm of Alexander Mamut, the owner of WATERSTONES in the UK. We have just sold the rights of KING CROW to a Hungarian and a Bulgarian publisher too.
Two of our titles, NOD by ADRIAN BARNES, published November 2012 and PIG IRON by BENJAMIN MYERS, published May 2012, are being read by American and Australian publishers. And we have just sold the TV and Film rights to the biggest Independent film and TV producer in Europe, but you’ll have to report back soonish and find out which title that’s for. The ink has just dried on the contract and we will know soon enough when it is going to appear on our screens.
So you see, we may be small but our reach goes across borders into Lancashire down the M1 to London over the Caucuses to Moscow, Sofia and Budapest and over the seas to New York and Sydney. Great stories are transformative and we have lots of correspondence from readers who’ve loved our books.

This Deli Has Yummy Stuff​

At Bluemoose we see ourselves as a delicatessen as opposed to a supermarket. We don’t stack them high and sell them cheap but put them at the front of the store with a big bow on each one because we’re passionate about what we’re doing and proud of what we’re publishing.
We hope that you will be too.
Cheers,
Kevin, Hetha, Lin, Leonora, Pippa and Jan
The Bluemoose family

 

[Hannah F]

The Guardian says "Blue Moose Books is a small but mighty literary hit factory."

 

[Katie-Ellen]

A literary publisher, old skool serious. I have read The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers.

REVIEWS

One of my books of the year ... It's the best thing Myers has done * Robert Macfarlane, Big Issue Books of the Year *
A windswept, brutal tale of eighteenth-century Yorkshire told in starkly beautiful prose * Guardian *
A brutal tale told with an original, muscular voice * The Times, summer reads picks 2018 *
Powerful, visceral writing, historical fiction at its best. Benjamin Myers is one to watch * Pat Barker, Guardian *
A phenomenal and highly energised novel * Sebastian Barry *

Grim, literary historical fiction set not too far from my neck of the woods. I didn't like it exactly. Like is quite not the word. A lack of likeable characters. Nastiness. Let's say rather I appreciated it for its historical, social and interpersonal insights and atmosphere. It's patently begging for a TV drama series, and if we were still in the 70's, you would have thought it was a sure fire candidate for such...The Onedin Line and all such.

Oh wait. HANG on. What is THIS?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_oB2Guusk8


Well then! Literature still lives with a capital L. Hope springs eternal, though this will be mostly an experience of existential gloom.

*Crawls back into her television cave cobweb whatever*

 

[Pamela Jo]

A literary publisher, old skool serious. I have read The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers.

REVIEWS

One of my books of the year ... It's the best thing Myers has done * Robert Macfarlane, Big Issue Books of the Year *
A windswept, brutal tale of eighteenth-century Yorkshire told in starkly beautiful prose * Guardian *
A brutal tale told with an original, muscular voice * The Times, summer reads picks 2018 *
Powerful, visceral writing, historical fiction at its best. Benjamin Myers is one to watch * Pat Barker, Guardian *
A phenomenal and highly energised novel * Sebastian Barry *

Grim, literary historical fiction set not too far from my neck of the woods. I didn't like it exactly. Like is quite not the word. A lack of likeable characters. Nastiness. Let's say rather I appreciated it for its historical, social and interpersonal insights and atmosphere. It's patently begging for a TV drama series, and if we were still in the 70's, you would have thought it was a sure fire candidate for such...The Onedin Line and all such.

Oh wait. HANG on. What is THIS?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_oB2Guusk8


Well then! Literature still lives with a capital L. Hope springs eternal, though this will be mostly an experience of existential gloom.

*Crawls back into her television cave cobweb whatever*

I love television cave cobweb. Gives Charlottes Web a modern twist. This def looks watchable. I just deplore the new fashion of having actors muddle into their beards instead of enunciate.

 

[Hannah F]

I love television cave cobweb. Gives Charlottes Web a modern twist. This def looks watchable. I just deplore the new fashion of having actors muddle into their beards instead of enunciate.

I have to use subtitles. But Gallows Pole will be one I won't be watching. Not into that kind of gloom.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

@Hannah F The book is almost relentlessly gloomy...though the story is largely entirely true. Fascinating history. I hadn't realized that in the Napoleonic wars, they made our soldier's uniforms in Hebden Bridge, the setting for the story. After the war...that demand fell away....boom and bust...and the bottom of the Calder Valley is narrow, steep walled, intense....the tops....vast.

I once encountered a "ghost" though perhaps I should call it a ghoul, in a farmhouse in Suffolk. The most horrible feeling in one of the rooms. It wasn't until many years later that I went back and came across a story that made me think, "so now I know who and what that thing was". A poor farmer went bankrupt and lost everything on the Stock Exchange...again, the Napoleonic Wars. He, his wife and their 5 children lost the farm, the mill, the house and were turned out on the parish. That farm had been in their family since before Norman times and now it was lost- on his watch. The aftershocks were still there in that house, now being used as a holiday let.

I also didn't find this out till years later. That my mother felt it too but never said anything for fear of frightening the children (I was 16) The feeling just grew and grew and it was truly HORRIBLE.
RIP poor John Sparrow.

@Pamela Jo Yes, pack it in with all the moody monosyllabic mumbling......mumble overkill. We need Mary Poppins to sort them out. P-uppies and kitt-ens. Sit up straight and enunciate those consonants, dear children! I remind my daughter to sound her t's....much to her annoyance...now that she is 28, and now that she is a teacher...

But teachers are after all, eternal students.

*Claws her way back up the cobweb* Once upon a time in Cornwall on holiday, I was reading Charlotte's Web to said daughter, bed time reading, and we came to the death of Charlotte, and that simple line in the book, "no-one was with her when she died."

What could be more stark? But animals so often do tuck themselves away somewhere quietly to die. We have seen it with much beloved local cats and family cats. It has been observed in king cobras too. They climb a tree and do not eat or drink and spend up to three weeks like this, getting themselves dead. And if some kind soul wants and dares to try and assist them, and fetch them down to give them water, they will not drink. They wriggle off and inch right back up that tree where they duly die and turn as stiff and dry as a stick.

And your ghost story was most touching and poignant. As well as extraordinary. But I can well believe it.

The real life web, and the web beyond the web.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Come. Please record that story about the farmhouse for us. On the night I'll match it with the one at Loftus Hall, once billed as the most haunted place in Ireland. Now, that's saying summit. It's being turned into a golf resort. That should be interesting. My son and partner were part of an annual Halloween show there with their horses. Ale did a stunt with a flaming torch on horseback, but had to wait outside. By the graveyard.

 

[KateESal]

Blue Moose is an impressive outfit.

Needless to say, I've tried to get them on as Pop-Up Submissions guests a few times, but no luck so far....