Autumn list · six new titles · printed in Seoul
Issue 37 · Autumn · Independent since 2014
Eleven titles a year, give or take a manuscript that arrives late and turns out to be worth the wait. We publish fiction that misbehaves, essays that argue with their own footnotes, and poetry short enough to read on a platform between trains. Everything is set by hand-eye rather than template, printed within an hour of this office, and sold by people who have actually read it.
Folio 01 — What we are for
We started in a room above a hardware shop with a borrowed guillotine and a list of four books nobody else wanted. Three of them are still in print.
Independence is not a marketing position here, it is an accounting reality. Nobody upstairs asks whether a manuscript resembles last year's bestseller, because there is no upstairs. That freedom cuts both ways: we cannot afford a book that only half convinces us, so the only thing we can bet on is conviction.
What follows from that is a certain house temperament. We like books with a visible argument, even when the argument is with the reader. We like sentences that were clearly rewritten. We are suspicious of any manuscript that arrives already knowing how it will be reviewed.
Editorially, we work slowly and say so up front. A first pass takes six weeks. The author receives a letter, not a rubric. Then we do it again. Writers who want a fast turnaround are better served elsewhere, and we tell them so kindly, in writing, with a list of houses that would suit them better.
Production is where the fun is. Every title gets a trim size chosen for its own text block rather than a warehouse pallet. We set our own type, commission covers from illustrators who are allowed to read the manuscript first, and refuse to shrink margins to save a signature.
We pay a real advance, split royalties at a rate we are happy to print in the contract, and send authors a statement every six months whether or not they ask. Nobody has to chase us for a number.
And we sell books the slow way — one shop, one reader, one reading at a time. If that sounds inefficient, it is. It is also the only method we have found that keeps a backlist alive nine years after publication.
Not skim, read. Two people, separately, before anyone writes a reply. It takes ten weeks and it is the only promise we never break.
Nothing goes out of print while the author still wants it in print. Short runs are cheaper than pulping and considerably better company.
Once a date is set it holds. Booksellers plan tables months ahead, and a moved pub date costs someone else their window.
Folio 02 — The catalogue
Autumn list plus the two backlist titles our booksellers keep reordering. Prices are the ones printed on the jacket; shops set their own.
Fiction · Ash Editions
Marin Ollerhead
A cataloguer finds that the back matter of a book she never opened records her own week, hour by hour, including the part she has not lived yet.
Essays · Folio Nine
Jun-seo Baek
Nine essays on queueing, loitering and the small civic art of waiting your turn — funnier than the title lets on, and quietly furious in the last forty pages.
Poetry · Pocket Field
Ilse Vantoor
Poems that open as forecasts and close as apologies. Sized for a coat pocket because that is where readers told us they kept the last one.
Fiction · Ash Editions
Adaeze Nnamdi
Two chefs, one twelve-seat room, and a recipe that both of them insist they invented. A novel about credit, and who gets to keep it.
Anthology · Folio Nine
Twenty-two contributors
Everything our writers scribbled in the margins of books they were meant to be reviewing, reproduced at the size they wrote it.
Nonfiction · Folio Nine
Tomas Reiter
A rhetorician's account of the twelve times he was publicly wrong, and what each concession cost him. Sold surprisingly well to committees.
Translation · Ash Editions
Hana Ferreira · tr. Sun-woo Lim
A family holds a funeral for a language nobody in the room still speaks. Our first novel translated from the Ferran, with the translator's notes kept in.
Illustrated · Pocket Field
Written and drawn by Peer Lindqvist
Sixty species that do not exist, each with a range map, a call transcribed in musical notation, and a note on why it has never been photographed.
Folio 03 — Lead title, autumn
Marin Ollerhead · first novel · Ash Editions
"Entry 411. Tuesday, the rain. See also: the argument you have not had yet, page 88."
Sera works nights in a reference library, assigning subject headings to books nobody requests. In the returns trolley she finds a volume with no title page, no author, and an index of four hundred entries — each one a moment from her own week, catalogued before it happened.
She does the sensible thing and files it. Then she does the human thing and reads ahead. The novel that follows is told entirely in cross-references, and it is very funny for two hundred pages before it stops being funny at all.
Ollerhead wrote it over four years while working the same shift her narrator works. We bought it on a Friday, after both readers came back with the same sentence underlined.
Folio 04 — Who we publish
Six from the current list. Every author here is signed for at least two books, because one is a favour and two is a relationship.
Fiction · 1 title
Reference librarian by night. Writes standing up, at a lectern, which explains the sentence lengths.
Essays · 4 titles
Our longest-serving author and the only one who files early. Has never accepted a cover on first showing.
Poetry · 3 titles
Came to us from a meteorological office and has kept the vocabulary. Reads at exactly the pace she writes.
Fiction · 2 titles
Cooked professionally for nine years before writing about it. Insists every kitchen scene be checked by someone who has burned themselves.
Nonfiction · 2 titles
Teaches rhetoric, argues for sport, concedes in print. Sends edits back with the word "fair" in the margin more than any author we have.
Illustrated · 2 titles
Draws the bird first, then invents the habitat that would produce it. Delivers artwork in a biscuit tin, every time.
Folio 05 — The Colophon
Craft · 12 Sept
Our senior editor on why an opening that answers every question has usually removed the reason to keep reading — and the three manuscripts that changed her mind about it.
7 min read
Production · 3 Sept
We reset the same 260-page novel at five different margins, printed all five, and asked eleven booksellers to hold them. The winner was not the cheapest.
11 min read · with photographs
Translation · 28 Aug
Sun-woo Lim argues that hiding the translation is a kind of dishonesty, and that readers are far more curious than publishers assume.
9 min read
Trade · 19 Aug
Every book that came back to us in the last twelve months, with the reason attached. We publish this annually because the number is only embarrassing if you hide it.
5 min read · includes the table
Letters · 6 Aug
A decision to decline is still a decision about a person's four years. Here is the template we landed on, and what we removed from each earlier draft.
6 min read
Shelf life · 21 July
Our second-ever title outsold its first year in its eighth. What kept it moving was not a prize, an anniversary, or an algorithm — it was thirty-eight booksellers.
8 min read
Folio 06 — Imprints and formats
Booksellers and rights buyers ask for this table often enough that we keep it on the site. Trim sizes are fixed within a series; extents are the range we actually print, not an ambition.
| Series | Format | Trim | Extent | Price | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ash Editions | Paperback, sewn | 129 × 198 | 180–340 pp | ₩16,000–19,000 | Open |
| Folio Nine | Hardback, cloth spine | 140 × 216 | 160–300 pp | ₩19,000–24,000 | Open |
| Pocket Field | Sewn wrapper | 105 × 165 | 64–128 pp | ₩12,000–14,000 | Invited |
| The Bench | Letterpress chapbook | 120 × 180 | 24–48 pp | ₩9,000 | Twice a year |
| Ninth Language | Paperback, translated | 129 × 198 | 150–280 pp | ₩16,500–20,000 | Agents only |
Sample figures for demonstration. Rights enquiries go to the same address as everything else.
Folio 07 — From typescript to table
We print this timeline in every contract. Authors say the useful part is knowing which months are quiet, so those are marked too.
Weeks 1–10 · Reading
Your typescript goes to two editors who do not discuss it until both have finished. If they disagree, a third reads it. If they still disagree, we usually publish — that argument is a good sign.
Months 3–6 · Structural edit
You get eight to twelve pages on what the book is doing and where it stops doing it. Nothing is marked on the typescript yet. Then we talk for as long as it takes, twice.
Months 7–8 · Line edit and copy
Every book is read aloud by someone who has not edited it. It is slow, it costs us three days per title, and it catches things four silent passes never do.
Months 9–10 · Design
No brief goes out before the artist has the finished text. Authors see three routes and have a real veto on all three, which they have used four times in twelve years.
Months 11–12 · Print
Someone from the house stands at the press for the first sheets of every title. Authors are welcome and most come. There is nothing to do there except look, which is the point.
Months 13–14 · Out
Publication week is the beginning. We reprint in short runs, resend to shops that sold out quietly, and put a title back in the newsletter whenever the world gives us a reason.
Folio 08 — On a shelf near you
"Properly" means face-out, restocked, and staffed by someone who will tell you honestly whether you'll like it. These are the shops we send first copies to.
Seoul · 14 shops
Busan · 7 shops
Jeonju · 5 shops
Elsewhere · 12 shops
Folio 09 — Readings this season
Everything is free, everything ends by nine, and there is always a chair kept back for whoever arrives last.
04 Oct · Fri
Paper & Ash, Webis-gu · 19:00 · 30 seats
18 Oct · Sat
Harbour Reading Room, Busan · 18:30 · 45 seats
07 Nov · Fri
The press floor, Webis-gu · 17:00 · standing room
22 Nov · Sat
Hanji & Type, Jeonju · 19:00 · 40 seats
13 Dec · Sat
Bookend Hall, Seongsu · 16:00 · 90 seats
Folio 10 — What gets said
A house that behaves as if the reader is already smart. Their autumn list is the most argumentative six books published here this year, and the argument is worth having.
I have sold ninety copies of a poetry pamphlet in four months. I have been a bookseller for nineteen years and that sentence has never been true before.
The margins are too generous and the book cost me more than it should have. I read it twice. Please do not change the margins.
They sent me an eleven-page editorial letter and not one line of it was about the market. I signed the second book before the first was typeset.
Publishing an annual returns table is either radical transparency or a cry for help. Having read this year's, I think it is the first one.
Nine languages, seven staff, one hundred and eighteen titles. Somebody should study how they do it, preferably before they explain it themselves.
Folio 11 — Submissions
Send the first fifty pages and a page about the book — not about you. No agent required, no synopsis longer than the excerpt, and absolutely no comparison to three bestsellers. We reply to everything within ten weeks, including the noes.
Fiction, essays, poetry and translation, all of it read
Ten-week reply, always with a reason attached
Advance paid on signature, statements every six months
Where to send it
One PDF to hello@webis.example, subject line: series name, then your title. That is the whole system.
Asked most often
No. Roughly half our list arrived unagented, including two of this autumn's six. If you do have an agent, they should send it the same way — we do not run a separate queue.
Pick one and say why in a sentence. If we think the book belongs on a different list we will move it ourselves and tell you — that has happened eleven times and six of those became books.
Entirely. Ten weeks is a long time to ask anyone to wait alone. Just tell us if another house makes an offer so we can read faster rather than lose the book by being polite.
An advance against royalties, split half on signature and half on delivery, with rights reverting to you if a title goes unavailable for a year. The full contract is on the site before you are ever asked to sign anything.
Yes, through Ninth Language, and we pay the translator a royalty rather than a flat fee. Send twenty pages in both languages and tell us who holds the rights.
Please. Say it is a resubmission at the top so the same editor reads it. Three books on the current list were turned down in an earlier form, and one of them twice.
Folio 12 — The letter
Written by whoever has something to say that month: an editor mid-argument, a designer defending a cover, occasionally an author explaining what took so long. Roughly nine hundred words, no tracking pixels, one link at the bottom to unsubscribe that actually works on the first click.
In a typical issue
Sent on the first Thursday. If a month passes without anything worth saying, we skip it and say so in the next one.