Welcome back to the Brighton Independent Press – your favourite Brighton-based queer owned book publisher. We’ve been quiet for a little bit whilst we make some behind the scenes changes, but we’re back at it with some new announcements. Here’s everything that’s changing at the Brighton Independent Press.

What’s New?

Website Updates

If you’re thinking things look different around here, it’s because they are. We’ve been reorganising our website to improve navigation and make it easier to find what you’re looking for. We’ve also been adding new segments to our website to make the Brighton Independent Press into more than just a digital book store – we want to be a homebase for writers and readers to find community, learn, and grow together.

In addition, we’ve been making some important accessibility updates to our site as it came to our attention that there were some simple fixes to make it friendlier for people using screen readers. We’ve now ensured that all pages have consistent H tags that show screen readers the order to read the page. We’ve also begun the process of ensuring images have alt-text where required so that people using screen readers will hear an audio description of all images. This is part of our mission to ensure our stories are accessible to as many people as possible. We are still unable to offer audiobooks as of yet for our readers who’d prefer an audio option, but rest assured, we’re working on it.

Blogs

In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re reading our brand-new blog segment. This is the start of a number of changes we’ve been making to improve our site’s visibility across search engines. Over the course of the next few months, we’ll be expanding our blog section to include advice about writing, guidance on submitting your manuscript to us and what we’re looking for from submissions, as well as new releases, general news and updates from us. You’ll also find out about any upcoming events and markets you can find us at – all right here, on our blog, so remember to check in regularly!

Newsletter

To partner with our sparkly new blog page, we’re also soft-launching a newsletter. If you’re a reader who loves our stories or a writer with dreams of being published with us, the newsletter is like our VIP list to make sure you get the latest info from us before anyone else even knows about it. Once it’s live, we’ll be sending regular monthly round-ups. You’ll also get told first about any in-person events and you’ll have first dibs whenever we drop new releases of books, special editions, and exclusive sales. We won’t spam your inbox though, you can opt out any time you wish, and we won’t share your info. Early sign ups are now live on our newsletter sign up page.

Social Media

If you’ve been following us for a while, you’ll know you can usually find us haunting your Instagram feed with aesthetic book covers and cosy reading vibes. Now, we think it’s time to expand our horizons, so we’ve joined TikTok! You can drop us a follow and come hang out with us anytime.

New Team Members

We’ve been planning this period of expansion for some time, and all of this has only been possible thanks to our incredible team of staff. We’re excited to announce that we’ve bought on some new team members who’ll be helping our business grow, supporting us through this expansion and beyond.

For starters, we’ve bought on Cait, a marketing consultant/SEO specialist and independent editor who’ll be advising us on marketing strategies to grow our business. She’s been working closely with our trusty web-dev, Cam, to advise on updates to the site. She’ll also be taking on a commissioning editor role – assisting our editor-in-chief, Petra, in reading and selecting manuscripts for publication. If you’re looking to publish your work with us, she’ll be the first person reading your work. Luckily, she’s got a weakness for sarcastic, traumatised characters who learn to love themselves, so you’ve got an easy in to impress her.

We’re also bringing on Yoshi, a new graphic designer who’ll be working closely with our authors and creators for cover art and social media work.

Behind the Scenes

Lastly, we’ve got some big news. In the background our director, Petra, has been attending industry fairs, going to networking events, and meeting with industry bigwigs to represent the Brighton Independent Press to some of the top publishing companies in the country. We are proud to announce that we are now a registered Independent Publisher’s Guild member! This gives us some amazing opportunities to learn from (and work with) longstanding independent publishers like Faber and Faber.

Our books are also now listed on NielsensIQ and Gardner’s databases, which should allow book stores to place orders for our books! Next stop, book stores. Then… the world?

What’s Not Changing

Whilst there are a lot of big changes going on, some things at Brighton Independent Press will never change.

We’re still queer owned, family run, and championing under-represented voices. Our beliefs and values aren’t going anywhere.

We’re also not raising our prices, and our house style isn’t going anywhere.

We hope that over the coming months, our business will flourish and our community will expand, and we look forward to welcoming a wave of new readers. But we will always be your community-led Brighton Independent Press.