Today I am hosting a statement written by Tristam Adams, friend of the blog and formerly Editor-in-Chief at Zer0 Books.
Both Zer0 Books and Repeater Books have continue to stagger on, in spite of the boycotts organised against them this year (see here and here). The internal goings-on that have led to a moment of fissure — which Watkins Media has sought to avoid any acknowledgement of, ignoring both the private and (later, necessarily) public concerns of its own authors and staff — have been shrouded in obscurity.
Tristam’s statement below sheds some much-needed light on what has been happening behind these beloved but beleaguered imprints. My thanks to Tristam for his trust in wishing to host this reflection here.
I started working for Watkins in 2021 as Editor-in-Chief of Zer0 Books. Tariq Goddard, the then founder, publisher and EiC of Repeater Books (and previously Zer0 Books) brought me in to oversee the imprint he founded and left (along with other Zer0 founders) to form Repeater Books. I am generally quite ‘British’ in my expression, nonetheless it is perhaps appropriate for me to say here how grateful I am for his trust and faith. Thank you, Tariq.
With both imprints under the same ownership, there was certainly a risk of the pair being in competition with each other, but in practice it was harmonious. Occasionally, submissions not quite right for Zer0 found their home in Repeater, and vice versa. At Zer0, my objective was quality control. Zer0 had, in the years before 2021, pursued a volume-first approach, to such a degree that it had damaged its own reputation and market standing. I worked through approximately 80 titles, contracted by the previous EiC, with quality as priority. During and after this ‘turning the ship’ period, I contracted authors and edited for both Repeater and Zer0.
Both imprints were gaining momentum and in good financial health when Goddard was dismissed. In my view, his treatment was beyond unfair. But there is something more notable and curious here. The episode that initiated Goddard’s ‘redundancy’ was the business owner’s disagreement about the signing of an open letter in support of Palestine. Parking the painful urgency of this for a moment, two questions from a flatly financial and business perspective are apposite:
Firstly, why remove a man that had largely built two successful imprints, against the odds of trends in publishing, when Repeater was doing well?
Secondly, and from the same gilet and pinstripe POV, was it an adroit business decision in terms of optics for the investor of ostensibly the UK’s largest radical-left imprint to veto the signing of this letter?
I am a dreamer. But my imagination for a business rationale behind these decisions fails me, leading to speculation that it was either personal or political or both. After Tariq’s departure, there were ‘no plans’ to cease publishing. Staff were told how financially viable the imprint was. Then there were plans to cease commissioning new Repeater titles. Then there were plans to mothball the imprint indefinitely. Watkins’ management of Repeater has been a pattern of disingenuous and subtle ‘mismanagement’ and ‘incompetence’ – an opaque and covert project of smothering and dismantling.
Since Goddard’s ostracism and the details of the business owner’s politics and financial connections to Israel, and the resulting boycott, I have worked in a state of torsion between supporting authors (many of whom are releasing their first books), and my own ethics and politics. During this time, I was informed more than once that there were no plans for any changes at Zer0 and that the imprint remained financially viable.
My thoughts were this: We are all complicit. One cannot be pure from genocide. Complicity is always a question of degrees. I was supporting authors on the just side of politics and publishing texts with urgent humanitarian arguments – some of which have pro-Palestine sentiments (not least my introduction to the new edition of Goddard’s The Picture of Contented New Wealth). Despite the discomfort of complicity, I felt on balance it was better to give voice to arguments and causes I support rather than no voice at all in a pyrrhic and doomed attempt towards purity.
This view shifted in October when my working arrangements were changed. I’d no longer be free to contract authors independently. Instead, I’d only contract titles subject to sign off from the business owner. Editor-in-Chief in name, not practice. This change fits the pattern of the unsaid and unacknowledged strangulation that characterised Repeater’s ‘pause’. It also meant that my agency to do good, to publish and promote the causes and arguments that matter, was gone. I worked for a single frantic month under the new terms, pushing as many authors as I could into production to ensure their books would be published, and resigned.
Much of the bravery and conviction of youth is no longer with me. I’ve grown cautious, perhaps reticent. I am wary of partisanship and dogma and latterly I increasingly hold that trust, empathy, commitment, and love are the routes to good without the former’s risks of violence. Yet the irk, the smart, of being subject to dishonesty, specious manipulation or deception has not waned – only my patience. As I type this, there remains the offensive managerial guise that these imprints may continue. In some comatose sense, they do – the back-catalogue rights continue to be sold around the globe, ensuring future profit. Yet any investment or conviction for new titles from authors with urgent arguments about today has gone.
I am very proud of the authors I contracted and had the pleasure of editing. Tom White’s Bad Dust: A History of the Asbestos Disaster, Torn: Fashion and Postmodernism by Eugene Rabkin, and Trav: A Novel by Taylor Burns are just some I am particularly fond of.
I feel for those I have left behind. And I feel for those I did not join sooner. Torsion, but it feels right.