After the virus: What utopia will look like for the publishing industry in the UK – Scroll.in

Trade

Foyles will be nationalised, handed over to staff to own collectively and run cooperatively.

Every publishing house will have a recognised Trade Union for all workers.

Anyone in publishing who references Harry Potter will be fired, this will be accepted by the Union.

Editors who do not do any editing will be moved to Sales and Marketing.

Editors will spend 70% of their week consuming culture that is in no way related to books.

Editors will not have to pretend they have read the Classics.

Editors Whatsapp groups will be leaked regularly.

90% of publishing will take place outside of Zone One.

Only 3% of publishers will be privately educated until private schools are completely abolished.

#ClapForBooksellers every Friday until the netbook agreement returns.

Tote bags will no longer exist, they will be replaced by A0 posters.

All existing tote bags will be requisitioned and used as bags for life at the Turkish Food Centre.

No book will cost more than 10.

A book shall not be celebrated for its size unless it is very small.

Small presses will not be patronisingly labelled brave. All publishing will be courageous.

Working class women from marginalised communities will hold editorial positions at all publishing imprints or houses.

English will become a minority influence in world publishing.

Translation will account for 40% of UK Publishing.

Prizes will not be awarded to books that do not need the publicity.

Prizes will be judged by readers who have nothing to do with the publishing industry or the media.

Prizes will be judged with a person to surname ratio of 3:4. So only one double-barrelled human per four judges.

Prizes will not be shared. The definition of the word competition will be respected. If you have a competition, you will keep it a competition. Otherwise, do not have a competition.

Prizes will not exist.

Publishing will be quicker and more responsive.

Publishing will be slow, deliberate and more thoughtful.

Working-class black men will be published more than once a year by more than one or two presses, and sold in more than one or two bookshops.

All publishing will fight fascism.

Publishing will not be Sensible; Sensible will not be published.

Publishers will aim to ferment revolution at all times as possible, in all areas possible, if possible.

Publishing will no longer be part of the Spectacle, support the Spectacle, or ignore the Spectacle.

Free spectacles will be available to all readers of books over 450 pages.

The profits from cookery book bestsellers will be split evenly across the 40 smallest presses in the country.

Books over 10 years old that are still in print will be added to the public domain.

New books published must be meaningful and do one or more of the following:

Pamphlets will return to everyday reading life and will be considered alternatives to newsprint media.

Books will prioritise ideas over form.

No one will have to pretend Literary Fiction is a genre.

Autofiction will auto-destruct after reading.

Airport novels will disappear along with airports and airport bookshops.

Not only books by dead black writers will make it onto the recommended reading tables in bookshops, alive ones will be prominent too.

The British Library will take its archive on tour in restored Led Zeppelin tour buses.

Books will be published to encourage and facilitate class war.

Books will be published to combat Received Opinion, not reinforce it.

Books will imagine new futures not hide in false pasts.

Books will not be put on pedestals, Books will be considered everyday objects that everyday people possess.

The text will be the only thing that matters because equal representation will be the foundational structure of publishing.

The Author with no experience of it, and physically able, will do manual labour between books.

The Author will engage with life outside of literature until the Author no longer believes literature to be necessary.

The Author will know they are important but act as if they are irrelevant.

The Author will have the name of their private school listed in their Twitter bio and is required to wear its insignia at literary events.

The Author complaining on Twitter about how hard writing is will not get a book deal.

The Author self-memeing quotes from their work on Instagram will not get a book deal.

The Author will not be on Social Media for the protection of The Authors mental health and ability to produce genuine thought.

The white Author will shoulder the burden of discussing representation equally and will be asked about it frequently in interviews.

The Author will only communicate with the reader.

The Author will not be put on pedestals, The Author will be considered an everyday person with everyday thoughts.

The Author will admit that all experiments have already occurred and nothing they write is new. Experiments with form will not be labelled experimental as they are finished pieces of work, not experiments.

The Author will not believe the hype.

The Author will believe in their reader

The Author who lives off their spouses vast wealth will have Spouse Funded England printed on the back of their books.

The Author will be paid fairly.

The Author will be under no illusion that being a writer is a viable career option.

The author will drop the uppercase.

The author will be killed once again, so that the text may live.

Kit Caless is co-founder of Influx Press. He is also the author of out-of-print 2016 Christmas stocking classic, Spoons Carpets: An Appreciation. This article first appeared on Minor Literatures.

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After the virus: What utopia will look like for the publishing industry in the UK - Scroll.in