Writing a book was meant to be a dream – but publishing it turned into a nightmare

Crowdfunding publisher Unbound is going into administration, leaving authors, contributors and shareholders unpaid. Kat Brown is one of the writers left high, dry and deeply disappointed

As a new author, you tend to be warned by published friends that your publication day will feel like a letdown. In the case of my anthology about infertility grief, No One Talks About This Stuff, which was published a year ago yesterday, I wasn’t prepared for just how much of a letdown it would become.

That’s because my cherished book was published by Unbound, the crowdfunding publisher founded in 2010 by John Mitchinson, Justin Pollard and Dan Kieran, which went into administration this week after months of unsettled payments. As one of its authors told me drily, “It has at times felt to me like their royalty statements are just another of the many works of fiction they have published.”

I launched the crowdfunding for No One Talks About This Stuff in mid-December 2021 and it was fully funded in April 2022. I was delighted to work with Unbound, whose authors include Terry Jones, Jonathan Meades, Jim Moir and Jackie Morris. It published Nikesh Shukla’s 2016 anthology The Good Immigrant, which I had backed (and which received a five-star rave review in this very paper). I chose Unbound as my publisher, in part, because it had a spirited history of publishing niche work that might otherwise struggle to find a home in the traditional press.

My book was a collection of new writing about infertility grief, from people from all backgrounds, parents and non-parents. I thought of it as a “support group in a book” and it was directly inspired by the dull, unacknowledged pain that I felt as someone without children, following failed IVF.

I was probably still mad with grief – what sane person crowdfunds £20,000 to publish a book, for heaven’s sake? – but I really wanted to help people – and to fill a place on the bookshelf so that anyone suffering could walk into a shop and feel understood. And, by going with Unbound, I was free to include stories that hadn’t been heard before rather than lean on the familiar names that a traditional publisher might require.

Unbound’s titles got good spots in bookshops and were shortlisted for prizes – one was even nominated for the Booker. All was as it should be.

I threw a party for No One Talks About This Stuff, paid for and organised by me – as so many authors do, contrary to what we’d believe on Instagram. I ran an extra Instagram account to keep supporters engaged and used my social media accounts to keep the book current. I pitched to book festivals, features, and podcasts for coverage. Months previously, I had asked whether I should tee up a bookshop to sell my books at the launch, as is custom. Unbound told me, no, they would handle the sales, so we could “keep more of the money”.

Six minutes before the party was due to start – and I am not joking for emphasis, by the way, I checked – I got an email from Unbound saying they were unable to provide any books to sell at all.

The author (back row, centre) and contributors to her anthology ‘No One Talks About This Stuff’ (Kat Brown)

A junior staff member who had started at the company a few months earlier was the sole attendee from Unbound and had to give a speech about a book she knew nothing about to an author who was seething with frustration. With my other launch through a different publisher a month earlier, my editor, publicist and even the managing editor all came – as did the books.

A week after the book-less launch party, I went on Woman’s Hour with Dr Rageshri Dhairyawan, one of my excellent contributors. It was a specific invitation from Emma Barnett, who has been a great support both of me and the book, for her final episode. Yet there were no copies of my book available to order other than via Amazon.

The then CEO, Wil Harris, had the gall to suggest to me that I should be glad my book was available on Amazon. Yet the point of going with Unbound was so that I didn’t self-publish, and so people going through the horrors of infertility grief could find the bloody book in shops and feel a bit more dignified about the whole thing.

I went with Unbound in good faith. Thanks to the more than 700 people who believed in the book, too, I crowdfunded more than £20,000 to make it happen and to help support others going through a horrific experience. Every other author did the same – yet the company has now gone into administration.

Unbound has promised in a statement that “all monies owed to authors by Unbound will be honoured by Boundless IP Limited” and blamed its financial difficulties on a “substantial investment” falling through in December, in an email sent to contributors in January. However, I’m in a WhatsApp group now, filled with unhappy, unpaid Unbound authors.

We feel it is Unbound in all but name and, by going into administration, apparently free of its financial commitments to authors and shareholders. It beggars belief. It also feels deeply unfair to those authors who will now no longer see their books published. As other Unbound authors have done, including Tom Cox, I am in the process of requesting my rights back from the publisher as I have no faith in them.

Publishing is already a difficult game. I’m in no confusion about that. Perhaps the Unbound of a decade ago was naive in thinking it could disrupt the industry.

For those authors working with vulnerable communities, it is sobering and deeply upsetting. It doesn’t change the pride and esteem in which we hold our books: but my word, it leaves a nasty taste. I felt ashamed of not being able to have children. Making this book was my way of creating something good and useful out of a rotten situation. My experience with Unbound has resurrected those shameful feelings – and compounded them into something even more devastating.

The Independent has approached Unbound for comment

Kat Brown is a British journalist, author of the guide to adult ADHD, ‘It's Not a Bloody Trend’, and editor of infertility anthology ‘No One Talks About This Stuff’