Paul Beatty’s Man Booker prize success this week marked the second win in a row for the small independent publisher Oneworld, after Marlon James last year. It’s an impressive performance from a press which, while founded in 1986, began to publish fiction only five years ago. But Oneworld – now rushing through a major reprint of Beatty’s winning title, The Sellout – is not the only small publisher making waves.
The Independent Publishers’ Guild (IPG) points out that 19 of the 36 Booker-shortlisted books of the last six years have been published by its members; along with Beatty, this year’s six-strong shortlist featured two other titles from independent presses – Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing, from Granta, and Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project, from Saraband.
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