Pub Chats is back! After an extended hiatus, the Poetry School’s long-running series of interviews with indie publishers returns with a fresh round of innovative small presses. Joining us today in our imaginary theatre pub somewhere in London’s docklands is Bernadette Jansen op de Haar of Holland Park Press.
Bernadette: A nice glass of wine, red or white.
How long has Holland Park Press been running?
Bernadette: I founded the company in March 2009.
Bernadette: Decide on a name. Incorporate the company as a Private Limited Company. Open a business bank account. Select the founding books. Write a business plan. Buy Clarke’s Publishing Agreements. Do lots of research.
Bernadette: Yes, very much so, after working for traditional and electronic publishing companies in a range of positions. Working at director’s level I gained plenty of experience about the ins and outs of running a business. Apart from that I’m quite well organised and like multitasking.
Where does the name Holland Park Press come from?
Bernadette: I wanted a name that sounded quite established and I also looked for a name that indicated a Dutch connection. I’m Dutch but I’ve lived here for more than thirty years.
Bernadette: First and foremost, the poetry needs to be good. We like the poems in a collection to belong together and have an underlying theme or take readers on a journey.
Bernadette: We accept unsolicited manuscripts all year round with a turnaround time of 4 to 6 weeks. We publish Dutch authors in English and Dutch. We run a pop-up bookstall on markets and book fairs.
Bernadette: Our most successful poetry book is 100 Dutch-Language Poems – From the Medieval Period to the Present Day: it is a poetry bestseller and has won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.
We are also proud of Diaspo/Renga, a collaboration in alternating Renga by Marilyn Hacker and Deema Shehabi which also sells very well.
Bernadette: For poetry, the titles mentioned above. We also published some notable successes for our fiction books.
Bernadette: It’s important. Books should look nice, inside and out. We are very lucky to have the excellent people at Reactive Graphics who design the covers and do the layout of our books. This means that our books share a look and feel which helps with the branding and encourages repeat sales.
Bernadette: CPI (Group) UK Ltd prints our books in the UK.
Bernadette: All our editing is done by tracking changes in MS Word. How long it takes varies quite a lot. Some manuscripts are a lot cleaner or more complicated than others. It takes as long as it takes.
Bernadette: You can find our submissions policy here.
Bernadette: In most cases writers find us either through the various directories in which we are listed, or by referral from other authors. We have also found some new authors through our annual competition. We’re currently running the Brexit in Poetry competition.
Bernadette: Yes, I think you serve your authors best by working on their titles full-time.
You can buy our books online and in bookshops, and of course from our own website and our pop-up bookstall.
Bernadette: I run the company with my brother, Arnold Jansen op de Haar, who is a published author of prose and poetry in English and Dutch.
Bernadette: For poetry we publish full collections and anthologies in print but we do not publish pamphlets. We also publish literary fiction: novels, novellas and short story collections.
Bernadette: I like And Other Stories, Comma Press, Five Leaves, Peirene Press, CB Editions and Istros. Actually, I admire most small presses which publish literary fiction and poetry. Here in the UK, we are a member of the IPG and, in the US, we are a member of CLMP.
Bernadette: I believe in the future otherwise why would I be putting in all this effort? Our aim is to publish books that are still read in a hundred years’ time. Yes, there are challenges, but a printed book, poetry or fiction, remains to this day a wonderful companion and a comparatively cheap and sophisticated present.
Bernadette: Don’t do it if you want to get rich. But if you want to have a very rewarding career and the opportunity to add something lasting to our cultural legacy, it’s a great opportunity.
Bernadette: Having a thick skin is essential.