Q&A with Daunt Books Publishing
This year, for Independent Bookshop Week (14th–21st June) we're partnering with the brilliant Daunt Books Publishing. Founded in 2010, the small indie press grew out of Daunt Books, an independent chain of bookshops in London and the South-East. Daunt Books Publishing publish the finest new writing in English and in translation, whether that’s literary fiction – novels and short stories – or narrative non-fiction including essays and memoir. One of their mission is also to revive authors who have been overlooked and to publish them in bold editions (they have brought back in print books by Sybille Bedford, Dorothy Baker, M.F.K. Fisher, Natalia Ginzburg and Vivian Gornick). In 2020 they launched Daunt Books Originals, an imprint for bold and inventive new writing, and have published the likes of Brandon Taylor, Elisa Shua Dusapin, Amina Cain, and many more.
Our team admire Daunt Books Publishing for their excellently curated list as well as their books' thoughtful designs. Naturally, we were thrilled to have the opportunity to ask the Daunt team some questions!
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Over the years, you have published many modern classics, printing beautiful new editions of books by authors who may have been wrongly overlooked. A brilliant example of this is bringing Natalia Ginzburg’s titles back in print in the UK. How do you encounter these authors’ works and decide on which to publish?
Dredheza Maloku, Editor (DM): This is one of the most fun aspects of the job and either involves some digging, literary agents and serendipity; sometimes all three. There have been times where I’ve been scrolling through Instagram stories and an author I follow and admire will post a photo of one paragraph from a book they’re reading, and it stops me in my tracks; I then shamelessly DM them and ask what the book is, then I track down the UK rights and pray that they’re available! Our booksellers are also a wonderful resource when it comes to this. They are such a fountain of knowledge, and incredibly passionate, and will often write to us with ideas of anything out of print that we should look into.
Marigold Atkey, Publisher (MA): In a variety of ways. Our own booksellers sometimes suggest books to us, which is especially lovely for us at Daunt (and then the immediate bonus, should we acquire it, is that we know we have at least one keen fan in-house already...). It might be that somewhere like LitHub or the New Yorker mentions in passing a classic and that sends us down a rabbit hole; or an author might cite a book as an influence or favourite overlooked classic of theirs. There are agents who specialise in trying to find new homes for old authors, who do wonderful jobs of looking for the right editor, list and vision. Then of course, there are the classics that are yet to be translated into English – so those might be recommended to us, or a foreign-rights agent might submit them to us (sometimes in a multi-language submission, trying to build the author as an internationally recognised name).
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Daunt publishes a diverse range of both fiction and non-fiction across time periods and continents. Despite their differences, do you see common themes, styles or approaches amongst those titles? What do you think makes a book right for Daunt Publishing?
DM: We’re very prose-forward and by that I mean that the writing comes first for us, always. Everything we publish is voice-driven, with an immediacy to the narrative voice as well as a strong sense of place. We like evocative books that transport the reader, whether this is in fiction or non-fiction, and this in itself is born out of the fact that the publishing team grew out of the bookshops, which as you may know are often organised by country, created for the ‘traveller’. We strive for our books to retain this sense of wonder and atmosphere, often choosing books with an international feel.
MA: The Daunt bookshops began as a travel bookshop, and even now, many of the stores are organised by country, as opposed to genre, so we do like to keep that focus on the international at the heart of our list. Because our list is relatively lean, we only acquire books we truly love and believe in so I think that helps keep the quality high. The writing has to be great. I’m particularly partial to quite a pared-back style of prose, with authors unafraid to trust the reader and let them step into the space around their sentences, but that’s probably in tune with a wider trend (and partly why Natalia Ginzburg has undergone a renaissance). I do love exercise and movement, and find how writers explore the relationship between mind and body and the worlds of sport fascinating so you’ll see that reflected in our books; I want books that explore humanity, emotions and relationships; I want a book to feel fresh, different; and I think all of us at Daunt love writing that has a personal strand used as a springboard for a wider exploration of a country, culture, moment in time.
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Daunt Books Publishing grew out of the independent bookshop chain Daunt Books. How does this connection inform the way that you publish? Do you have a relationship with the Daunt bookselling team, or are the two operations entirely separate?
DM: There’s quite a symbiotic relationship between the publishing team, the head office at our Marylebone High Street (MHS) and the booksellers. We work closely with head office at MHS in signing-off of both acquisitions and covers.
Once finished copies of a book are in, we send out a staff email to all the booksellers, reminding them what the book is about, and that they can take a free copy as and when they wish. This maintains an ongoing dialogue between us and the booksellers; our bookshops are our most unique resource, and we like to ensure the booksellers are excited about what’s coming up from the publishing team. At the end of the day, they’re the ones selling our books to customers, and are ultimately the face of the company, dealing directly with the consumer. I’ve always loved this relationship and it truly helps to inform our publishing strategy. Often the booksellers will write to us if they’ve fallen in love with a specific book we’ve published, and this also helps us to gauge their taste, informing what we continue to acquire and what sort of reader is buying each book.
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What does a typical day look like at the offices for Daunt Publishing?
DM: It’s very varied depending on each of our roles and on the time of year, and this is what’s great about it! As there are only four of us, it does mean that we each wear multiple hats and dabble in everything. Twice a year we do our royalties, so this looks like us frantically wading through Excel spreadsheets of each title, ideally with some energising music playing in the background! As the editor, there are certain times of year where a few edits will deliver at once, so this looks like a very much head down and intense editing couple of weeks, where everything else has to wait. The Daunt Books anthologies are a good example of this following an annual format, as we always publish in spring and usually at this point I’ll have essays for the next year’s anthology also deliver, and will be editing those; publishing truly makes you question how abstract time is, how quickly it moves; it can really feel like you’re always looking ahead and your brain starts to think in publishing schedules!
We have weekly team catch-ups usually on a Monday morning, as well as weekly production meeting to make sure we’re all on top of the schedule. Stock reports are also analysed each week to help us keep on top of stock levels of our titles, which then deliver to our offices beneath the Owl Bookshop, to the main Marylebone store, and to our distributor. Reading also takes up a lot of time and we keep each other informed on which submissions we’re excited about, rejecting, offering on and in two minds about, often leading to robust discussion.
Jimena Gorráez, Publicist (JG): My working days are never the same and that’s one of the biggest joys of my role. As our list grows, I like allocating time to a particular book campaign to make sure every title has an equal chance to pick up coverage. A campaign will start with a tailor made spreadsheet with names that range from newspaper’s literary editors, magazines, broadcast, online platforms, freelance reviewers and bookshops. The first stage is a pitch followed up by a proof mailout. Once this is done, there’ll be a constant exercise of updating that spreadsheet, drafting new pitches (and hoping someone will bite), following up with people who have expressed an interest in reviewing and reaching out to bookshops to offer reading copies.
Securing coverage is so out of my hands. My job as publicist is to pitch, tweak the pitch, pitch again without becoming annoying and pushy. I also work on finding different angles of the book that will catch the attention of those in a position to commission a review. I think publicity works in mysterious ways, as you can never have 100% certainty of what will be reviewed. The wall of silence is real, I have contacts that have never ever replied to my emails but trust me, I’ll keep trying!
Author care is also part of my day. I believe that good communication is essential for the success of a campaign. Part of my job is to keep authors informed about the shape the campaign is taking and sharing reviews when they run.
Becca Calf, Assistant Editor (BC): For me a day can include sending stock to one of our shops or distributor, editing an introduction to one of our classics or trying to figure out how a pesky typo keeps getting into the copy we’re feeding out to websites and bookshops. Recently I’ve been helping the booksellers in the Hampstead shop with preparing the anthology of winning stories from our Children’s Short Story Competition, which has meant getting to read some wild stories that could only come from a young imagination. A day also normally involves trying to understand what the office printer wants from me.
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What books are the Daunt Publishing team reading at the moment?
MA: I really struggle to read for pleasure so tend to be about ten pages into about five books at any one time. I’m re-reading Solvej Balle’s On Calculation of Volume (tr Barbara J. Haveland) as I lost it at auction and pine after it still, Helen Garner’s How to End a Story: Collected Diaries and Beryl Bainbridge’s Watson’s Apology.
DM: I’ve just cracked the spine on my first ever Cazalet book, The Light Years, by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Picador have reissued these recently in gorgeous new jackets, and an old colleague whose taste I trust highly recommended getting into these family sagas; so far, I’m absolutely loving this one and luckily there are four others to be getting on with after!
JG: After months of having it on the radar, I finally bought a copy of Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. I’m very interested in the history of The Troubles in Northern Ireland and this book came highly recommended by my colleague Gary, who runs The Owl Bookshop. Trespasses is just perfection, 100% my kind of book. I’ve been blown away by Louise Kennedy’s ability to tell a heart-breaking story set in a deeply complex historical moment. I’m absolutely loving it.
And before that I was completely immersed in Heretics by Cuban author Leonardo Padura. Heretics tells the fascinating story of the Jewish community in Cuba through the life story of Daniel Kaminsky and his family treasure: a small portrait by Rembrandt. The book will take you to 16th century Amsterdam, 1940s Habana via Miami in 2008 and beyond. It’s a truly remarkable book.
BC: I’ve recently started Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume I, which is off to a great start. All the right people have been recommending it to me, so I’m sure I’ll love it. I just finished reading one of our titles That’s All I Know (sorry, not very humble to be raving about our own books), I absolutely loved it and will be recommending it as your stifling summer read. Up until these two books, I’ve been on a joyful binge read of Percival Everett’s books, special mention to So Much Blue.
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What do you think are the challenges that the publishing industry faces at this moment in time and how are you responding to them?
DM: Right now, AI is the biggest challenge, as well as dwindling attention spans (the two may even go hand I hand). We constantly hear from colleagues at the ‘big five’ publishers that they are being actively encouraged and, in fact, often forced, to use AI to help with writing emails, scheduling and general communication. At Daunt, we are adamantly against this and are very consciously not using AI tools, disabling them wherever we can, and continuing to work collaboratively as we always have. We’re in a business of words, of communication and reading, and truly think that AI will detract from this if it becomes the norm in all modes of internal and external communication.
MA: I could write essays and essays on this (the damage done to our education and culture by the previous government, which will result in fewer people from less privileged backgrounds going into the arts, which will result in more homogeneity, a more narrow field of worlds, visions, experiences, people won’t find themselves in books, will turn to them less on and on); as Dredheza has tackled AI I’ll do cost-of-living crisis and rising production costs (sexy!): paperback prices have stayed pretty much the same for years; we’re inching ours up, but nothing like at the rate needed to keep pace with the rise in the costs that go into producing a book, while what author can make a living writing now?! There’s little we can do at such a small house so I think trying to get the word out about our books is key but also maintaining quality and aiming to publish something different, something beautiful, so people know it’s a treat that they’re getting.
JG: From a publicity point of view, I think the biggest challenge is the reduction in review space. With literary magazines struggling to survive (and eventually folding) and newspapers shrinking the number of books they review, every publisher is fighting for the same spot. And usually big names from big houses win. But this also allows us to be creative with the way we publicise our books. This makes bookshops and booksellers more essential than ever. I’m very keen in learning more about bookshops’ initiatives such as book clubs and subscription boxes. It’s exciting to see booksellers taking on curatorial roles and offering customers carefully tailored reading experiences that cannot be found online. I’d love to see more of our books being picked up for these projects.
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’Don’t judge a book by its cover’ aside, it’s true to say that Daunt Books Publishing has an incredibly high standard of cover design, do you work with a wide range of designers on them? Could you perhaps tell us a little bit about that process?
MA: It’s one of my favourite things about being at Daunt and I can be a little obsessive about it. We don’t have cover meetings, or an in-house design team. We approach freelancer designers on a case-by-case basis, aiming to commission those we feel will do the best job of interpreting our vision and the author’s books. We’ll have consulted with the author beforehand, to check what recent covers they’ve loved or disliked, and if there’s anything they don’t want on the cover, and to run our potential direction for the cover by them. We then brief a cover with some ideas, and the themes of the book, along with quotes that capture important characters, moments or settings, and then include a selection of covers we feel reflect a similar mood, or the kind of aesthetic we would like. Then however far down the road, the designer sends us some first visuals, we might request some tweaks, then once we’re happy with one, we send it to our three main booksellers over at the Marylebone shop. They give us either a thumbs-up, a thumbs-down (boo!!) or more tweaks. And we do this until we get to a cover that we can run by the author for their approval! And we cross our fingers that they haven’t used an image that is astronomically expensive to license. I’ll say this: often it’s when the designer goes off-brief that they really deliver something magical. Designers are amazing at drawing out things you might have missed and coming up with something far better than you could ever have dreamed. AND not having cover meetings is key – fewer cooks to spoil the broth.
DM: We have a group of trusted freelancers that we use and tend to approach each one on a case-by-case basis. By now there’s a clear grasp on all their different styles, and when I’m first reading a book with a mind to publishing it, I always have a specific designer in mind depending on the tone of the book and what I think they can pull out of it. This is one of the most satisfying parts of a job, seeing a book come to life visually, and we’re always on the lookout for new freelancers to add to our rotating roster. Sometimes new designers will email us directly and pitch their portfolios, and other times we come across their profiles via social media and add them to our database.
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Can you give us a ‘sneak peek’ hint about something you’ll be publishing in early 2026?
DM: The fourth novel from one of our most beloved Daunt Originals authors... it’s haunting, atmospheric, set in rural France, about two sisters, and it’s brilliant!
MA: We’re excited to be welcoming Fatima Bhutto to the list with The Hour of the Wolf. A coercive relationship with a cruel and intoxicatingly charismatic man governed Fatima’s life for years: this is the story of how she extricated herself from his control. That sounds bleak, but it’s such a rich memoir, full of beauty – of nature, literature, mythology; of the night sky and astronomy; of friends and of one ferociously loyal Jack Russell in particular. There’s a generosity and heart to Fatima that is irresistible – she’s not only a wonderful storyteller, she’s a special soul.
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What does your ideal bookshop look like?
DM: It must have a cat; there should always be a cat in a cosy bookshop or pub (take note from the wonderful Tapping the Admiral pub in Kentish Town, and their sweet cat, Nelson). I also love dark mahogany bookshelves, lots of little alcoves and nooks for reading, paired with ladders too, due to the high ceilings and shelves. Low, romantic lighting with perhaps one part of the shop making way for a large window and natural light. I’m essentially visualising and describing Shakespeare and Co here, maybe even that opening scene from Before Sunset...
JG: For me, every bookshop is an ideal bookshop. We are so lucky to have an incredible amount of independent bookshops up and down the country offering such a huge range of books and other unique items (I recently bought a t-shirt with the irresistible logo of Sheffield’s Novel bookshop). In particular, I love the ones with plenty of seats to chill and browse. I always trust a bookseller, and this makes me a fan of hand-written staff pick card, so lots of them please!
MA: A cat keeping watch on the counter, maybe a dog curled up in a corner; staff picks on tables and as notes on the bookshelves; a pay-it-forward scheme; a display of favourite indie and in-translation books; poetry and graphic-novel sections kept lovingly up to date; no music; perhaps a little garden, a separate room for children’s books and reading, and maybe a café in a separate side room too? AND a wall that could be used to project films on, for book/film nights.
