The Dead Ink Bookshop

We're Dead Ink Books. We're an independent publisher and we're based in Liverpool. We've been running for many years now and we've published some very succesfull books – Naomi Booth's Sealed and Exit Management, Lucie McKnight Hardy's Water Shall Refuse Them, Missouri Williams's The Doloriad. As we've grown it has been our plan to open our own bookshop where our publishing offices will be based and where we stock books only by independent publishers!

We've found an amazing shopfront on Smithdown Road in Liverpool. One with a lovely windowed front and space in the back for our office. The rent is affordable, the location is perfect, and there is very little work required inside to make it ready for ourselves.

However, we've hit a problem. Despite us being able to afford it all and us being ready to go in an instant, the tenancy requires a guarantor other than myself, the Director of the company. And frankly, we just don't know anyone who earns above the threshold required to act as a guarantor.

The alternative is that we pay one year of our rent upfront. That's £14,400.

This GoFundMe is set up to raise that amount. We know that this is a lot, but we've crowdfunded projects in the past and we want to try again.

The Dead Ink Bookshop will be a small shop focused on independent publishers. We'll be championing books from small businesses across the UK and making space for the non-commercial. We'll also be offering:

Would you like to help us make this happen?

Our aim from the start has been to make a space where publishing interacts with the public. We're an industry that is so often hidden behind closed that we want to open it up so that we can collaborate, inspire, and build.

Our website is here!