Books are My Business: Bluemoose Books' Kevin Duffy

Kevin Duffy runs independent publisher Bluemoose Books

Kevin Duffy runs independent publisher Bluemoose Books with his wife, Hetha, in Hebden Bridge in England. 

Several of their titles have won or been shortlisted for prestigious prizes and awards, including I Am Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam and Ghost Signs by Stu Hennigan. 

The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers won the world’s leading literary prize for historical fiction, the Walter Scott Prize in 2018. 

Leonard and Hungry Paul by Irish author Rónán Hession, has sold more than 125,000 copies worldwide.

How did you get into publishing?

I started off in a library supply company in London in 1986, then when Headline Publishing started in 1986/7, I was a sales rep for London. 

I worked for various other publishers, business, academic, and fiction/non-fiction, until we started Bluemoose Books in 2006.

What does your role involve?

As well as spotting good books, my expertise is sales and marketing.

Why did you set up Bluemoose?

Since the demise of the net book agreement in the UK, the bigger publishers were taking fewer and fewer risks because they had to offer bigger discounts in the high street, and then Amazon came along in 2007. 

So the chances for new writers especially from working-class backgrounds and the North were reducing significantly. 

We set up Bluemoose Books, to find new talent from up here, although we are pretty international now, our writers are from all over.

You have a high strike rate for a small indie publisher, what is the secret of your success?

Our fantastic editors. They all have different tastes. 

If we all read something we think is a great story, beautifully written, we trust the booksellers to hand-sell it and the readers to read it. 

We... work with independent booksellers across the country and in Ireland, getting... them to fall in love with a book. 

The best thing to sell a book is hand-selling and word-of-mouth. Indie booksellers... have got behind all our writers. We [them] a huge debt really.

What are the main challenges you face as an indie publisher?

Brutal discounting in the high street. I’m not naive, it is a commercial business but the discounts big publishers are offering to main retailers means they are buying shelf space. 

That is the difficulty, getting your books seen on the shelves. That is where prizes come in handy, because it shines a spotlight on your books.

What about Brexit?

It is an absolute nightmare. We are distributed by Ingram, who are based in Milton Keynes, and they are global distributors so they do get books into Europe. 

But we are not selling any books off the website into continental Europe. The market in Ireland has gone through the floor. 

Part of the problem is the paperwork and also returns because it is costing retailers and wholesalers a fortune to return books. 

As a small publisher, we cannot afford for our books to be pulped rather than be returned.

What do you like most about your job?

Every day is so different. I love that I can open up my email and there will be [a submission] from someone [new] and it could be the best thing I’ve read in 10 years... bringing a book from a manuscript to the finished article and seeing it on bookshelves and people reading it on the bus or the Tube.

What do you like least about it?

Trying to get payment. Getting books reviewed is harder too but in Ireland, all of our books tend to be reviewed.

What three books would you bring to a desert island?

Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines, Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson and Leonard and Hungry Paul [Rónán Hession].

• bluemoosebooks.com