Dead Ink Books is a Liverpool publishing house with a desire to build a connection to the community through books.
Nathan Connolly became the director of Dead Ink Books in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2015 when the company received funding from Arts Council England, he was able to quit his day job and begin full-time at the newly re-launched Dead Ink.
Nathan said: “It was quite exciting, I was running Dead Ink as a hobby business for a few years. It felt like it was never going to take a step up until we could put more time into it.
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“It was definitely a leap into the unknown, I had a general understanding of how publishing works, but nothing too in-depth. We had a lot of risks and a lot of faith.”
After years of hard work and many ups and downs, Dead Ink Books are finally ready to open their doors to their first book shop on Smithdown road in October, 2022.
It was far from an easy road to the shop, Nathan told the ECHO. The company relied heavily on the generosity of their following through crowdfunding when it came to putting a deposit on the shop.
The building required 12 months rent upfront, something Nathan did not have. Thankfully, they received over 300 donations which took them halfway to their goal of £14,000, and the other half was covered by a local donor who wishes to remain anonymous, Nathan said: "They said they wanted to help because they saw how many people had been donating and they had connections to the area and wanted to see it happen."
The desire for a book shop meant that Dead Ink could focus on independent publishers like themselves and, as Nathan said: “present a shop full of books people might not see elsewhere.”
Additionally, through the shop they hope to build a stronger connection to the local community in the north with the publishing industry. Nathan told the ECHO: “We're very keen for there to be a flow between bookshop and publisher so that people can see what goes on in there, local community publishing happening. Publishing can be seen as an elitist industry, and the majority of the time takes place in London. We want to have a place in the north where publishing is happening.
“All of this is happening on people's doorsteps in the community.”
Dead Ink hopes that people in the community will be able to connect with their authors and be introduced to books they might never have otherwise discovered. Nathan added: “What we look for is always quality, but I think at Dead Ink what I try to look for is something that is slightly unusual and which is not being published by the commercial publishers. For us, that is bold fiction with something to say, something that isn't afraid to challenge the boundaries between genre and the literary.
"I like to continually surprise our readers with what we're offering them and bring them different types of books all the time."
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