Local authors

Local authors are part of what makes an independent bookshop worth having, and some of the books we love pressing into customers’ hands started exactly this way. If you have written and published a book, we would genuinely like to hear about it.

We also owe you honesty: we are a small shop with room for only a few thousand titles, chosen from the roughly two hundred thousand published every year. We say no far more often than we say yes - to established publishers too - and a no from us is a judgement about space and fit, never about the worth of your book or the work you put into it.

To sit on our shelves alongside trade titles, a book needs to meet the same bar customers apply to everything else in the shop:

• Professionally edited and proofread.
• A 13-digit ISBN with a scannable barcode on the back cover.
• A printed spine carrying the title and author name.
• Cover design and print quality that sit comfortably next to the other books in its category.
• A realistic cover price for what it is.
• Standard trade terms: at least 40% discount, supplied on a sale-or-return basis.
• A clear sense of who it is for - and ideally a reason it will matter to readers around Portishead.

Availability through a trade wholesaler is a bonus: it makes reordering painless when a book sells.

Please use the form below rather than bringing copies into the shop, it keeps things fair on busy days and makes sure your book reaches the right person with everything we need to consider it properly. We read submissions in batches, roughly monthly, and we will be in touch if your book looks like a fit. We are a small team and cannot reply to every submission - please take silence as a matter of capacity, not a comment on your work.

Books we take on get a proper chance: shelved with their category, championed when they find their readers, and, for the right book, a place in our events programme. We would rather stock a few local books properly than many grudgingly.