Armley Press

On their website they state that they want to be '˜daring, unorthodox, dynamic and give voice to real people' '“ and Leeds-based independent publisher Armley Press certainly live up to their promise.

Founded in 2008 by Mick McCann, the self-styled ‘punk publishers’ are associated with ten authors and have published 17 books, all with an authentic voice.

“I set Armley Press up basically to put out my first book, a memoir set in 1970s Leeds called Coming Out as a Bowie Fan,” says McCann.

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The second book was Leeds-set thriller Hot Knife, written by McCann’s longtime friend John Lake who, despite having a London agent and a lot of interest in his work was not able to get published. “We put out another couple of my books and then we started talking. We decided that there must be a lot of really good writers around having the same problem we had.”

Both felt that Armley Press could offer an alternative to the London publishing scene which they consider to be pretty risk-averse. “The major publishers in London tend to go for safe things,” says McCann. “Right from the start I though what I was doing was kind of ‘punk publishing’ because it was a bit like what was going on in the music scene in the late 70s and early 80s. I saw the similarities in that. We publish mainly Northern writers but we do also publish southern writers, we don’t want to be pigeonholed.

“It’s really anything that grabs us. We want a real-life feel to it and a bit of an edge.”

www.armleypress.com

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