Interview with Kate Macdonald of Handheld Press

Interview by Harriet

Harriet: Hi Kate – thanks for agreeing to do this. We know you’re working on a memoir of your Handheld days, so this will be a special sneak preview. And of course we’ll review that when it comes out.

Kate: Lovely, thanks.

Harriet: We talked to you six years ago when Handheld was a relatively new company. Fast forward to July 2024 and Handheld has just published its final book. What are you proudest of in the seven years of its existence?

Kate: I think publishing 48 books in seven years is what I’m most proud of: the sheer quantity of titles meant constant hard work, often in the evening, usually at weekends, and very little of it was publishers’ lunches and going to flashy events! I may have had only had two or three lunches-as-a-publisher, and only went to one prize event. (It would have been two if not for lockdowns.) All that work was done largely by me keeping the wheels and plates spinning. So I’m proud of that. I’m proud of rediscovering so many stunning authors who had been completely forgotten: eg Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford, John Llewelyn Rhys, Sylvia Thompson, Faith Compton Mackenzie, Marjorie Grant and Inez Holden. And I am delighted that I boosted a new genre into mainstream popularity: the anthology of classic supernatural short fiction by women authors.

Harriet: Most of your working life before Handheld was being an academic and researcher. How challenging was it to switch to the world of publishing, with all its multifarious demands? What did you find easiest and what was most difficult?

Kate: Well, my first jobs were in publishing! Before and after taking my PhD I was a freelance editor for a charity and for a book packager and then I got a proper job with English Heritage as one of their small team of academic editors. I couldn’t have plunged into being a publisher without that background, despite it being pre-internet experience. When I did go back, I found the new IT and technical aspects quite easy to learn; it was the appallingly entrenched and complicated book industry systems that boggled me most. And still do. The easiest switch was writing Introductions and the Notes for the Handheld Classics: that was simply an extension of the teaching and research writing I’d already been doing for years. The hardest was getting the book industry to pay any attention to us. That took about 8 months, because I had zero trade experience and nobody knew who I was (quite reasonably), so I had to publish our first books and then clamber up the tree, first getting a freelance sales rep to vouch for me to Gardners, the wholesaler, and then being distributed by Gardners meant that Waterstones would talk to me, and then I got a proper distribution deal after we’d published book five. I had to work that out all on my own because nobody explained it; the assumption was always that of course I knew the industry because they did.

Harriet: Your choice of books covered many genres, including fiction, non-fiction, sci-fi, weird, letters, almost all of them reprints. Are you completely impartial or are there some books – or some genres – that have a special place in your heart? Any that you regret?

Kate: I am particularly fond of our four Rose Macaulay titles, because I am very fond of her. I edited the first scholarly collection of essays on Macaulay back in 2016, and wrote two very long essays myself, on her non-fiction and annotating her complete works, so I do know her writing inside out. Being able to bring What Not, Potterism, Non-Combatants and Others and Personal Pleasures back into print was exactly what Handheld was set up for (some were more wildly successful than others!). She is a magnificent writer, and so much fun. I regret trying to do too much in the beginning by setting up Handheld Modern as well as the Classics and the Research lists. We published two modern fiction titles in 2018, After the Death of Ellen Keldberg by Eddie Thomas Petersen, and So Lucky by Nicola Griffith, and we decided after about a year to revert the rights and give up on the Modern list because they were just not selling. I don’t know how to market modern mainstream fiction: it’s as specialized as any other genre, even though it’s one of the biggest, and it’s not what I’m good at. So I regret that it took me so long to realise that.

Harriet: What’s it like saying farewell to Handheld?

Kate: To be truly honest, a big relief. However, given that we decided to set an end date back in March 2023, and we won’t stop trading until the end of June 2025, it is definitely a long goodbye. I was tired of working flat out for so little return, and we don’t have the capital to create the volume of marketing to give the books the publicity they need to sell what we’ve printed. So I wanted to get off the treadmill as I’d had enough. Once we made that decision, I immediately felt terrible because I wanted to publish all the titles I had lined up until July 2024, so we had to stretch the long goodbye out even longer. But I’m glad we did it that way. Production on The Gulls Fly Inland, our July 2024 title, finished in March 2024, and since then I feel as if I’ve been released into freedom. I still do a lot of marketing (like this delightful questionnaire, for example), and David still checks stock, chases invoices, queries statements, etc, but we feel that our work on Handheld is nearly done.

Harriet: I gather you are starting a new publishing imprint. The Peachfield Press. Can you tell us something about that?

Kate: Well, I’ve been writing novels and short stories for some time, in realist fantasy and science fiction. Since the pandemic the publishing industry has really changed in terms of which books are given contracts, based on what editors and bookshops think are going to sell, and in who is chosen to be marketed as the new bright and shiny star author of the month (60-year old white Scotswomen with wild grey hair do not often make this list). Despite having had an agent for two years, and having received lots of enthusiastic noises from the editors my novel was pitched to, I didn’t find a buyer. So I decided that I would just publish it myself. I serialized The Shetland Witch on Substack, and the response was pretty good, with people paying to subscribe to access the extra novellas I serialised as a bonus. For tidiness I invented The Peachfield Press as a trading name, and The Shetland Witch comes out on 9th September, as an ebook and paperback. I may publish my second novel that way too, after going through the Substack route as a testing ground as I’ve found that really helpful. And I may publish other people’s work too: it all depends on what I think might work. If J L Carr could do it, so can I.

Harriet: Any further plans for the future? What’s life going to be like after Handheld?

Kate: As I have now realized that I am on the way to retirement (today is my 60th birthday: my Senior Railcard has been ordered), I hope that life will be full of writing, knitting, gardening, and reading. I have lots of lovely production work to do on The Shetland Witch and its companion volume, I have Novel 2 to get on with, and I have The Handheld Diaries to finish and then find a publisher for. I may do some editorial consultancy if I feel like it (there have been some enquiries). I’ll go to ballet class and do voluntary work creating order out of chaos and writing minutes for the local refugee support group and my Quaker meeting. I hope that life will be varied and unstructured, with a surprise every day because if you go outside you will see wonders. And I expect to see wonders.

Harriet: Thanks so much Kate, and best of luck with your future ventures.