New Guidelines for The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses
Please read the below carefully
The RofC Prize has been awarded charitable status. With this comes certain responsibilities. The bullet points below aim to set out as clearly as possible our aims and purpose, and entrance eligibility for the prize.
Charitable Purpose as set out in our Constitution:
To promote for the public benefit the art of literature and in particular to promote literature of high merit published by small presses in the UK and ROI by providING grants to practitioners and produceRs of literary fiction and the promotion of such literature to the public.
Please see this short blog piece for the types of books we tend to reward.
Why we’ve Changed the Eligibility Criteria
Since I founded the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses in 2016, the small press landscape has significantly altered. Our first winner, Fitzcarraldo Editions, now publishes 4 Nobels winners; And Other Stories has an US operation; Galley Beggar has had a Booker short-listed book; Charco and Tilted Axis, along with Fitzcarraldo Editions, seem to be permanent members of the International Booker Prize short list. This is what success looks like. I can’t claim the prize has had a much to do with this new landscape, but it does mean we have to look at what we’re doing in light of it. Our founding insight, if you will, was that the Big Five could afford to publish risk-taking books because they had best-selling authors to underwrite (no pun intended) the loss, but they had almost completely ceased to do so. This meant that publishers who could least afford to take the financial risk were left to publish the most risk-taking work. A deep irony that needed some kind of recognition and action. Therefore our founding principle was to support, to the degree that we could, small presses exposing themselves to financial risk because of the creative risks they were willing to take for the broader literary landscape.
But the changing landscape mapped out at the top has required us to think hard about what we do. How do we make sure the money we have is awarded to the presses who most need it. Over the first seven years, we defined a small press by personnel – 5 or fewer fulltime workers. But this was difficult to assess because there are a lot of part-time and freelancers involved. Last year we changed it to 12 or fewer books. Both are blunt tools. Maybe 8 of the 12 books are new editions of previously successful out-of-print books? Is it fair that a publishers with a substantial arts council funding, publishing 12 books, is in the same race as a publisher who doesn’t have any funding and only publishes 3 books a year? And size is relative. Compared to Faber, Fitzcarraldo Editions is small, but it more than 10 times the size of Peirene, who have been going a similar length of time. Success also isn’t a reliable indicator. Galley Beggar has had a number of breakout books, but it is still only publishing 3-4 books a year and kept going by a team of two. Financial risk is less clear-cut. A number of small presses now have National Portfolio Organisation funding, which contributes to core costs, cushioning the impact of low sales for risk-taking books. This is obviously important support, but in many ways, it’s a large scale version of our founding principle.
With all this in mind, the Trustees have agreed new eligibility criteria:
· A small press must be completely financial independent of any other business - larger publisher, bookshop etc.
And two of the following three:
· Publish 8 or fewer original titles a year
· 4 or fewer fulltime workers (regular freelancers must counted)
· A turnover, including all grants, of less than £100,000 per year in 2 of the last three financial years.
The information on this year’s judges can be found here.
Entry Information.
Only one entry per press
Entry requires a submission form, an Advance Information Sheet (1 side of A4), a pdf of the work, a hi-res image of the cover and author / translator, and in order to keep up with information subscribe to https://therepublicofconsciousness.substack.com/
Opening date for this stage of submissions will be July 9st, 2024
Closing date will be August 31st 2024
If hard copies are called in, 4 copies need to be available by November 1st 2024
Long List end of January, 2025
Short List beginning of Feb 2025
Winner(s) beginning of March 2025
Prize Money and other Awards
The amount of prize money is subject to money raised between now an announcement of long list. All money awarded by the RofC Prize must be used to commission or produce work of high literary merit.
The long listed presses will split 50% of the prize pot, with all money going to the presses. The short list presses will split the remaining 50% - of which the presses must award 30% of their allocation to writer or writer/translator.
This year all longlisted presses will will be connected with the British Council Literature team who can offer market insights and international connections through their global networks. The longlisted publishers will also be invited to apply to participate in British Council publishing programmes and will receive invitations to their professional events.
To request a submission form please fill out the form below and submit