The independent publisher and bindery has so far raised more than £3,000 over its survival goal of £12,000, kick-starting the pre-production funding for another novel and helping the business map out its future.
Consisting of husband and wife team David and Ping Henningham, the boutique found itself in trouble after seeing its emerging European customer base vanish because of Brexit red tape in 2021.
The successful campaign – which shot up dramatically after David’s X (previously Twitter) thread about the company’s post-Brexit troubles were widely shared – has inspired the couple.
David told Printweek: “It was a massive relief.
“We just keep having ideas now: we’ve been contacting authors we want to work with, and are having some great conversations. It has really focused our minds.”
The pair has just taken delivery of their latest release, Paul Griffiths’ Let Me Tell You and sequel Let Me Go On.
Printed on two-tone GF Smith paper, with covers foiled by hand by the Henninghams and material printed at Exeter’s Short Run Press, the book will be published on 8 September.
“It would have been a swan song if things hadn’t worked,” David said.
“But now it feels like a celebration, sending those books out to people.”
The attention received by the campaign has not just been invaluable for its cash injection into the business, he added.
The company has now more than doubled the number of bookshops on its order list.
“One of our main targets for making ourselves sustainable was that we needed to get more customers directly, and cultivate better relationships with bookshops.”
That dialogue with booksellers has helped the couple launch into their work with certainty, too: now aiming for at least four publications per year, they are aiming to keep regular contact with their retailers and readers.
Ping said: “This year, we’re not quite going to hit four, because obviously, we couldn’t schedule things when we didn’t have the funds.
“Essentially, the campaign bought us time to get organised – we had been getting there, but in order for it all to kick in, you always need that time.”
The couple will also be examining print-on-demand technology in the future, to bypass the restrictive export duties that had wiped out their European customer base in the first place.
“Print-on-demand is streets ahead of where it used to be,” David said, “and it can actually help us counteract quite a few of these problems with crossing borders.”
Overall, it has been an exhilarating experience for them both – one that David compared to a near-miss from a car – but the pair recognised the work still to come.
Ping said: “We’ve raised the money to scale the mountain, but the mountain is still there to scale.”
