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a nonpolitical petition to sign
Jan. 8th, 2008 10:12 amThe Arts Council (the bit of the UK Government that assists, or is supposed to assist, cultural endeavours that might otherwise struggle; the sf magazine Interzone is, or certainly used to be, one such beneficiary) has decided to withdraw funding from the small(ish) independent publisher Dedalus, which is consequently likely to fold.
Dedalus publishes mainly fiction, a lot of it in translation from other European languages. It also has a very good track record of selling translation rights into those other European languages of the originally-in-English books it publishes -- one of the ways in which publishers (and writers) can be astonishingly effective contributors to a nation's balance-of-payments figures. Leaving aside the cultural considerations that are supposed to be at the heart of the Arts Council's mission, it would be an economic nonsense for the nation to withdraw its small investment in this business.
A petition has been mounted to try to stop this folly. You can find more details at http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/01/dedalus_fights_back_with_petit.html and the petition itself at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/16111.html.
Dedalus publishes mainly fiction, a lot of it in translation from other European languages. It also has a very good track record of selling translation rights into those other European languages of the originally-in-English books it publishes -- one of the ways in which publishers (and writers) can be astonishingly effective contributors to a nation's balance-of-payments figures. Leaving aside the cultural considerations that are supposed to be at the heart of the Arts Council's mission, it would be an economic nonsense for the nation to withdraw its small investment in this business.
A petition has been mounted to try to stop this folly. You can find more details at http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/01/dedalus_fights_back_with_petit.html and the petition itself at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/16111.html.
