When Tom Fletcher first sent me ‘The Home’, I thought it was perfect for Nightjar, but I wondered if it was too short – not as a story, but as a story that I could publish as a standalone title – so I didn’t ask him if I could publish it. It didn’t go away, however; it hung around in the back of my head. It haunted me like a nightjar, or goatsucker. So, I thought about it again: could I get away with publishing a story that was barely 1300 words long? The shortest I’d done before was over 2000 words. I forget how many times I asked myself this question and came back with the answer ‘no’, before one day I told myself the length was irrelevant. Anyone who had been following Nightjar would know that we were not trying to ‘get away with’ anything. We were just trying to publish the best new stories we could find that shared this common mood of the uncanny.
There had been one or two people telling me from the day I started Nightjar that it didn’t make economic sense to publish individual short stories and charge three quid for them, not when you could get a whole collection or anthology for not much more than twice that. But at the same time there have been others telling me I should be charging a fiver, even a tenner, per chapbook.
So I asked Tom if his story was still available and luckily it was. Then I had to find a story to publish alongside it. The months went by and I rejected several good stories; I knew which story I wanted to pair it with – a story by Leone Ross that I had heard her read at the Hurst on an MMU Arvon week and begged her to let me publish, but she’d promised it to McSweeney’s, an American magazine that’s published in a different format each time it appears (how annoying is that?).
So I waited and I waited and read story after story, and, finally, Alison Moore sent me ‘The Harvestman’ and I knew I had my nineteenth and twentieth titles. I could publish these two and then close down, at least temporarily, as I’d been planning to do. But then something made me ask Leone Ross again about her story, and, as she was still waiting for McSweeney’s to schedule it, she offered to ask them if she could pull it and replace it with another. They agreed (good old McSweeney’s, not annoying at all) and so I’ll be publishing Leone’s story in the autumn. All I need now is a story to go with it…
Royal Mail prices go up every year. I have resisted putting up my prices, until now. You will see there’s been a small increase in p&p charges. If overseas customers could make sure to select the correct option for payment (Europe or RoW), I would be most grateful.
There had been one or two people telling me from the day I started Nightjar that it didn’t make economic sense to publish individual short stories and charge three quid for them, not when you could get a whole collection or anthology for not much more than twice that. But at the same time there have been others telling me I should be charging a fiver, even a tenner, per chapbook.
So I asked Tom if his story was still available and luckily it was. Then I had to find a story to publish alongside it. The months went by and I rejected several good stories; I knew which story I wanted to pair it with – a story by Leone Ross that I had heard her read at the Hurst on an MMU Arvon week and begged her to let me publish, but she’d promised it to McSweeney’s, an American magazine that’s published in a different format each time it appears (how annoying is that?).
So I waited and I waited and read story after story, and, finally, Alison Moore sent me ‘The Harvestman’ and I knew I had my nineteenth and twentieth titles. I could publish these two and then close down, at least temporarily, as I’d been planning to do. But then something made me ask Leone Ross again about her story, and, as she was still waiting for McSweeney’s to schedule it, she offered to ask them if she could pull it and replace it with another. They agreed (good old McSweeney’s, not annoying at all) and so I’ll be publishing Leone’s story in the autumn. All I need now is a story to go with it…
Royal Mail prices go up every year. I have resisted putting up my prices, until now. You will see there’s been a small increase in p&p charges. If overseas customers could make sure to select the correct option for payment (Europe or RoW), I would be most grateful.