Difficult books, beautifully made.
We publish the novel that took nine years and the essay nobody commissioned — set in Garamond, sewn in sections, jacketed in one unmistakable blue.
The catalogue, face out
No photography, no foil, no franchise. Every jacket is set in type alone — blue for fiction, paper-white for the essays — so the words do the selling. Tip a book to read its spine.
The Winter Archivist
A municipal clerk catalogues a city that no longer exists. 216 pp.
Salt Roads
Winner of the 2025 Meridian Prize for Translated Fiction.
A Field Guide to Drowned Towns
Eleven reservoirs, eleven vanished parishes, one walker.
The Apiary
Three sisters inherit two hundred hives and one debt.
Against the Weather
On forecasting, fatalism, and the North Atlantic mood.
Little Republics
An apartment block declares independence, floor by floor.
Ninety Days of Rain
Genoa, 1970: a flood, a strike, an unfinished confession.
The Provisional City
Scaffolding, hoardings, and other permanent temporaries.
A great book does not need a cover designer rescue party. It needs a publisher who believes the title alone is reason enough to pick it up.
The translator on the front
Every translated title carries its translator’s name on the jacket and a royalty in the contract — 2% of cover price, from the first copy, forever.
Nothing goes out of print
We reprint in honest batches of 1,500 rather than pulp a single book. PL 1, from March 2021, is on its sixth printing.
Bought, never licensed out
We read some 640 submissions a year and take fourteen. What we take, we keep — no paperback auctions, no film-first acquisitions.
Forthcoming
Autumn 2026 – Winter 2027| Month | Title | Author & translator | Series | ISBN | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2026 | The Sleep of Rivers | Katarzyna Molik · tr. from the Polish by Ewa Sandford | Fiction | 978‑1‑83842‑047‑3 | £13.99 |
| Oct 2026 | What the Fire Spares | Miren Etxeberria · tr. from the Basque by Jon Aldai | Essays | 978‑1‑83842‑048‑0 | £12.99 |
| Nov 2026 | A Ledger of Small Harbours | Owen Meredith · original English | Essays | 978‑1‑83842‑049‑7 | £12.99 |
| Nov 2026 | Concerning My Sister | Sorcha Deane · original English | Fiction | 978‑1‑83842‑050‑3 | £13.99 |
| Jan 2027 | The Blue Hour of Vera Lind | Ilse Brandt · tr. from the German by Mara Ostrowski | Fiction | 978‑1‑83842‑051‑0 | £13.99 |
| Feb 2027 | Radio Silesia | Katarzyna Molik · tr. from the Polish by Ewa Sandford | Essays | 978‑1‑83842‑052‑7 | £12.99 |
All titles publish as sewn paperbacks with flaps, 129 × 198 mm. Subscribers receive each book roughly three weeks before the trade date, numbered by hand at the shop counter.
Read the year in advance
A subscription is how a press this size stays independent: your money arrives before the print bill does. In exchange you get every book early, numbered, and posted flat — plus The Lark, our twice-yearly broadsheet of translators’ notes and rejected epigraphs.
A Single Season
The next four books as they appear, autumn or spring. The gentle way in — and the gift we wrap most often at the counter.
Start a seasonThe Fiction Year
All eight novels, September to August, each hand-numbered from an edition of 300 subscriber copies. Includes The Lark.
Take the fictionThe Whole List
Everything we print — fourteen books, both broadsheets, and first refusal at the annual misprint sale every December. Postage included, UK and EU.
Take it allThe shopfront
Find us
Unit 4, The Ropery
23 Cygnet Walk
London E2 9DG
Two minutes from Cambridge Heath station; the door is the blue one. Step-free from the yard entrance.
Hours
Thursday – Saturday
11.00 – 18.00
First Sunday of the month
12.00 – 17.00
Every book on the shelf is ours — all forty-seven, plus proofs, misprints at half price, and the broadsheet archive.
This season
Thu 17 Sep · 19.00 · £6Sigrún Ásta & Peter Knox on drowning a town in two languages
Sat 3 Oct · 14.00 · Free, RSVPTranslation clinic with Grace Ahn — bring 500 stubborn words
Thu 12 Nov · 19.00Winter list launch & the December misprint sale preview
Trade & press
Bookshops order via Meridian Distribution or directly: trade@paperlarkpress.co.uk. Standard terms, firm sale on subscriber editions.
Review copies and extract permissions: press@paperlarkpress.co.uk. We answer within the week, by a person.
Paperlark Press
a colophon, in the old sense
Founded in London in the spring of 2021 by two former rights assistants and one lapsed typesetter, with a print bill larger than the bank balance and a list of six books nobody else would sign.
Our books are set in a Garamond cut for the press in 2022, printed on 80 gsm cream bookwove, sewn in sections, and jacketed in the same blue we have mixed since the first title — specified once, matched forever.
This site is set in EB Garamond and Archivo, and drawn entirely in type: no photographs were commissioned, licensed, or missed.
Forty-seven titles · Eleven languages · One blue
Paperlark Press Ltd · Company No. 13 28 47 06 · London E2