Claret Press
We are a small independent and traditional press located in Clapham. We’re London-based and the majority of our books are about Britain. But our memoirs and travelogues take you around the world. So do many of our thrillers.
Black Tea by Stephen Morris has been shortlisted for the Christopher Bland Royal Society of Literature Award 2020. Opera by Julie Anderson has been longlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award 2023. Daisy Chain by Justine Gilbert has won the Page Turner Award 2022 and the Historical Fiction Company Silver Medal 2022, and has been shortlisted for the Paul Torday Memorial Prize 2024. Those Absent On the Great Hungarian Plain by Jill Culiner has won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biographies/Memoirs 2024.
Claret Press can be found at:
Website: claretpress.com
Facebook: facebook.com/ClaretPublisher
Instagram: @claretpress
Substack: @claretpress
TikTok: @claretpress
When did you start publishing?
I started in 2015 out of my bedroom. I have now moved to the front room of my house and if I play my cards right, will never have to move from it.
What made you want to start an independent publisher?
I had edited word-of-mouth for decades and I would come across great books that really should have seen the light of day. Instead, they languished in the bottom drawer of the author’s desk. I felt as if I was part of the problem and wanted to be part of the solution.
What genres do you specialise in?
I publish commercial fiction and non-fiction that grapple with issues of the day. That is, politics. But I am not interested in textbooks or screeds. I like pageturners in which the ideas burble away in the background.
Where are you based?
London. And the majority of our books are set in the UK although our travelogues and thrillers can take you around the world.
Do you have a submission window, if so when?
Typically the summer.
What is your submission procedure?
I prefer a one-page synopsis and the first 25 pages.
Who are you (team photo if possible)?
The team changes but it’s always at least me and Secco.
What was your background in the book industry before this venture?
I edited professionally for a long time.
Talk about some of your books if possible, upcoming, favourite?
That’s like choosing between your children. It’s a very unfair question. But here’s my favourite non-fiction memoir: Operation Ark by Pen Farthing. He had been thrown under the wheels of a bus by our own government because he stayed behind to report on the Taliban when it invaded Afghanistan, and to get his staff and animals out. It reads like an edge-of-your-seat thriller and yet is the truth.
My favourite thriller: White Road by Harry Whitehead. It’s about eco-sabotage in the polar north of an oil rig, which strands a Scottish rescue swimmer on an ice flow, with a hungry polar bear for company. It’s a terrifying adventure.
My favourite forthcoming is Where the Earth Holds Secrets by award-winner Eve Makis. In the aftermath of the civil conflict in Cyprus, shallow unmarked graves are being found. Who do the bones belong to? There are people who do not want the truth to come out.
