Saving Dedalus Books

[Stewart]

I posted this over on my blog, but I'll post it here should others wish to add their name:

British independent publisher, Dedalus Books, are, after twenty-five years in existence, threatened with closure due to the withdrawal of Arts Council of England funding. This is due to cuts announced recently which would see about two hundred companies across England losing their grant.

Dedalus Books, for the uninitiated, are a specialist literary publisher (more here) publishing both British and European names within their own niche market covering what they call “distorted reality, where the bizarre, the unusual and the grotesque and the surreal meld in a kind of intellectual fiction which is very European.” Some of the names on their list are recognisable Andrew Crumey, Honoré de Balzac, Eça de Queirós, and Nobel prizewinner, Luigi Pirandello. Of the greater unknown, they are, to me, a reading temptation.

In this Times article, a reason is given for the cut:

The Arts Council says the cuts are designed to concentrate its funding on organisations of excellence while penalising the average: “In the majority of cases this has been decided on the basis of . . . well documented issues with poor performance. It is the strength of artistic output.”​

I don’t know about Dedalus’ performance over the years but it seems silly that they should withdraw funding from this niche publisher when, according to the Art Council of England’s literature policy for 2007-2011 (PDF), they list, amongst their priorities:

We want to increase the profile of international writing in this country by supporting those publishers committed to literature in translation.​

And:

We want to increase the profile of international writing in this country by supporting those publishers committed to literature in translation.​

The people at Dedalus Books must feel that their Arts Counci has failed them with such hypocrisy. What’s particularly galling is that the funding that has been withdrawn is, apparently, around £25,000. It seems like pocket change when you consider, according to this Observer article the Royal Opera House, over 2005 to 2008, stands to make £77m from Arts Council funding. In the Lords Hansard for May 2006, Lord Colwyn raised the point that “in 2005–06, jazz funding was £1 million; for 2006–07, opera received £62 million.” While, in terms of audience share, both jazz and opera perhaps share parity, the funding is grossly weighted to opera, although that may be, as also noted in the Lords Hansard, the industry is worth £5billion. Since the bulk of the Arts Council funding goes to opera and that, as the figures would seem, is making enough to sustain itself, one wonders why they persist in funding such an art form when there are others, notably literature, that need the money.



Returning to Dedalus Books, they have a period of appeal which is coming up soon wherein they can state their case. What would be helpful to them is literature minded souls willing to sign their petition in order to get:

The Arts Council to reverse its recommendation not to fund Dedalus after January 2008 and to enter into a new partnership with Dedalus so the company can thrive and not merely survive.​

The Arts Council of England also note on their priorities for the next few years that they “will create greater equality of opportunity for readers, writers and those in the publishing industry.” Well, as a reader, I would hope that the damning decision is reconsidered in order to give that “greater equality of opportunity” as I, for one, don’t want my only choices, in ten years’ time, being whatever Richard & Judy deem suitable for literary consumption. Okay, perhaps a tad extreme, but you know what I mean. Further contact details and information can be found on the Saving Dedalus Books page.

I actually wanted to whinge on and on about opera. But restrained myself.

 

[abecedarian]

I don't understand their logic for cutting funding. It looks like Daedelus is already producing the very type of material they say they want to promote. Is is merely a matter of a few people not liking Daedelus' lists..or is it that whoever makes the decisions on the Art Council not having control of what this company chooses? The other question is who would get that money they're taking from Daedelus?

 

[Stewart]

I think their logic is they want to encourage these small publishers to look into alternative publishing and distribution methods. Based on what ACoE literary manifesto states, they are aware of new trends in publishing and presentations of literature and would rather these small publishers cluster together to explore these avenues. To me it sounds like they'd rather the publishers left paper behind and moved to that most horrible of reading formats, the eBook.

The money, no doubt, will go to more fricking opera.

Seriously, though, it's more likely that the rise of events is contributing to the lack of funding to smaller entities amongst the arts. Every city wants to be on the map in one way or another, so literary funding is more likely to go to larger scale events that will bring in tourists and other interested parties in droves, whether it be something equivalent to Glasgow's Aye Write festival or the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

 

[abecedarian]

At the risk of exposing myself as an ignorant hillbilly(we DO have hills in Kansas, you know), is opera THAT popular in the UK? If so, why do they need funding that would otherwise go towards literature? I know it too is part of the Arts...but..ew. That's just my personal preference speaking..

OTH, aren't there a lot more readers who buy books in the UK? Which type of book gets bought more? Ebooks or the old fashioned kind? Which generates more money?

Then again, why are they putting more money into one arcahaic art form that a few people enjoy, if it means taking funds away from another that more people use? I'm not convinced that printed books are archaic anyway, but you know what I mean.

 

[Sybarite]

... is opera THAT popular in the UK?...

No. But in the era since the 1980s, when the government of the day decided to start butchering arts funding (after all, why would the less-well-off need to go the theatre or go to drama school etc?), opera – certainly in terms of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden – seems to have enjoyed continued good funding. Much of that, I suspect, is because government types and senior civil servants like the occasional night out at the opera – more as a social occasion than because they actually enjoy or understand anything about the music.

We have long had a history in this country of behaving as though the arts were for the elite. After WWII, that changed, with avenues opening up for people from all backgrounds – hence kitchen-sink drama in the 1960s. The government of Margaret Thatcher put paid to that. It's one of the reasons that, a generation down the line, we lack good writers of TV dramas (that and the pressure that has been put on the BBC to chase ratings); the system of grants meant that local rep theatres used to be able to risk new writers: it was understood that a lack of bums on seats didn't mean that a play was bad, while trying new work wasn't going to crucify a company financially. Now there are far less places for new writers to come through.

... OTH, aren't there a lot more readers who buy books in the UK? Which type of book gets bought more?

That's true to a point – but the quality of literature read is probably not the highest. Independent bookshops were hit by the end of an agreement that set prices on books for all retailers – now supermarkets can sell all the popular stuff and at less than a small, independent can. In terms of going to a bookshop (mostly chains now, unless you're really lucky), most people will now have a more limited choice presented to them. The quirky book that might appeal to a few readers is not going to have much chance if the space on the shelf can be filled with a book by some tin-pot 'celebrity' who has become famous by being dumber than the rest of the contestants on a TV 'reality' show.

Unfortunately, having had a government in the 1980s that knew the cost of everything and the value of nothing, we now have a government that is utterly wedded to marketisation and the belief that the market will has the answer for absolutely any and every situation.

And perhaps an even bigger tragedy is that I really don't think that the majority of people in the UK care. We've lost a once-thriving film industry of our own, but most people seem happy with whatever tat Hollywood churns out. We used to have thriving local streets with a wide range of butchers and bakers and fishmongers to choose from, but these have largely gone as people rush into supermarkets to stack up their trolleys and then their freezers.

 

[Stewart]

R.i.p. G.b.

 

[Sybarite]

R.i.p. G.b.

There are days that I really don't think that you're far off with that, Stewart.

We seem so utterly dazzled by absolutely everything from the US that we seem in a mad rush to copy it all, from government thinking that marketisation is the way forward for the NHS, to huge swathes of people treating food as though it were mere fuel for their bodies, to be bought as cheaply as possible from massive, drive-to supermarkets, in a form that as is easy to prepare as possible and takes only a few minutes in the oven/microwave before being consumed in front of the telly watching more lowest-denominator tat.

I think that there is some hope – in terms of food, farmers' markets are springing up and doing okay, so there are people out there who really do want decent food and consider it an important part of their lives.

In the same way, my local shopping street (which had been 3/4 derelict for donkey's years, after all the butchers and bakers and fishmongers etc closed, after people decided that one or two vast supermarkets offered them more choice) has been revived in the last couple of years, partly by a weekly farmers' market, but also by cafes and a French deli opening, and an independent DVD rental shop (joy! It has decent films from around the world) and in the last 18 months, an independent bookshop. I've been making a point of buying and ordering things from her, because it's so bloody important to support such enterprises.

In book terms, after the net book agreement (which I touched on earlier) forced so many independents to close, it's a pleasure to see that Foyles has survived and given space to other, far smaller independents such as Silver Moon, which were seriously under threat. But even now, the future is not certain for Gay's the Word on Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury. People have got so used to Amazon etc that they get out of the habit of going and browsing in shops that they used to. Fortunately, a newspaper report on gay's the Word seems to have put any closure on hold, with people returning to browse and buy.

I'm not a Luddite – there's a real place for Amazon and its ilk: personally, I've found so many things that I wouldn't have known about otherwise by browsing on Amazon. But it's vital to support the small shops and publishers. And it's an area where the internet can be of real help too, as here, where Stewart can raise the subject and we can easily go and add signatures to a petition.