What a great response to my last email, many thanks for your pre-orders and donations to our GoFundMe! Your support is inspiring. Thank you to each and every one of you.
If you haven’t yet heard, we’re raising funds to support my Arts Council application to publish our next three books. This is match funding for the ACE application, which is essential to its success. And substantial at £6570.
We aim to reach this goal by Thursday 1 September.
We’ve had a steady stream of pre-orders and donations, but still have a long way to go. As of today, we’ve raised £350 (including pre-orders and donations). I'm asking you dear reader for your support. Please consider pre-ordering one of our new books or make a donation on our GoFundMe page. Your help will enable us to publish three new ballsy memoirs and launch the careers of these debut writers.
Here are some details about our new books – Flying With Fear, Smashed Not Wasted, and Dear Mr Andrews – and what we’ve been up to.
About a week ago, I had a meeting with Susan Milton (Flying With Fear) to talk about promotion. And also about HarperCollins who expressed an interest in Flying With Fear after she had signed the contract with Guts. I knew she was disappointed. Because I know it’s every writer’s dream to be published by one of the big five publishers.
Flying With Fear begins in 1969 when Susan takes a job as an air hostess with Saudi Arabian airlines. On her first flight, she discovers she’s terrified of flying. Susan moves to Saudi Arabia, converts to Islam and marries a Saudi. What follows is the remarkable story of a young woman navigating an oppressive culture, a story packed with drama and controversy, including Susan’s interactions with the Saudi royal family.
In our meeting, I said to Susan, “If they [HarperCollins] had published your book, they would have edited out a lot. Like the part about the Saudi royal family. Because it would have been too risky. I’m sure they would have been thinking about Salman Rushdie, and not wanted to go there.”
An hour after our meeting, I heard the news about the attack on Salman Rushdie. It was an eerie moment. Not exactly in a good way, but in a way that inspired me even more to publish Susan’s memoir. I wrote about this on our blog which you can read here.
I’ve also been chatting with Sam Thomas about his memoir Smashed Not Wasted. Which is, to be honest, also risky to publish. With so many addiction memoirs out there, I’ve had to ask myself – how is this one different?
Set in the hard-partying gay club scene, it’s not for the faint of heart. Sam takes the reader into a world of excessive drinking and a Grindr hook-up gone bad. Shame lurks and he plunges further into drinking. According to Sam, no one even knew he had a problem. Only after he hit rock bottom and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, did his recovery journey begin.
And, it wasn’t a 12-step program. A recovery story we don’t hear often. It was on his own terms, including the use of Twitter and #recoveryposse as a support group. Sam still posts regularly with 5800+ tweets to date and 4800 followers.
I’ve also been in touch with Lotte Latham about Dear Mr Andrews and her dual life as artist and sex worker. It is of course a risky and boundary pushing memoir, and we have the added challenge of Lotte’s pseudonym. Which means we are constantly assessing and strategising ways to keep her identity anonymous.
In discussions with Lotte, I’ve come to understand more about her experiences. The one I’d like to tell you about today is called ‘Sugar Dating’ which is a form of dating (websites and all) where a young woman trades sexual favours in return for a gift from an (almost always) older man. Examples include a cash bail out, a holiday, or a job. To note: one in 20 college students in the UK are currently involved in sugar dating.
In Lotte’s own words:
“Admittedly, I got into escorting via sugar-dating as a gateway. It seemed less scary to me as it provides a veil of plausible deniability. Say someone outed you as a hooker? That shit tears families apart! But if you get caught with some guy paying your rent each month it can be passed off as being savvy.”
We’ve had so much support for the mission we’re on at Guts. Not only with our readers (thank you all!) but also with prominent literary figures. It’s encouraging to know they also see the value in what we’re publishing, who we’re publishing, and why indie publishing matters. Here are two that I'd like to share:
“What I like about Guts Publishing is its willingness to take risks, help writers to develop their skills and bring unheard voices into the public domain.” — Blake Morrison, poet, bestselling author, and professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths.
“Julianne is that rare example of a publisher who is far more motivated by the nurturing and publishing of more transgressive and challenging work than the usual constraints placed upon authors involving profit margins or hitting the bestseller lists.” — Tobsha Learner, playwright, screenwriter and bestselling author.
Thank you for reading. Please bear in mind, our goal is to raise £6570 by 1 September. Minus £350, which is £6220. I know we can do this. And I'd love for you to be part of this. Your support will enable us to publish these books and launch the careers of three debut writers.
All best,
Julianne Ingles
Director, Guts Publishing
