Gritstone author Mike Padgett on his experience of publishing a novel with the Gritstone Publishing Cooperative – part 2 Getting through the selection process
How I made it through Gritstone’s selection procedure
I first met Colin Speakman at a Saturday book fair in the Ridings Centre in Wakefield in 2024. The fair was organised by the charity Promoting Yorkshire Authors (PYA). We were there, along with twenty or so other authors, to sell our books and promote PYA. Colin is famous. He has written or edited over fifty books, mainly about Yorkshire people and the Yorkshire outdoors, and he is a founder member of Gritstone Publishing Cooperative. We shared a stand and one incident particularly impressed me. A married couple with a child took an interest in one of Colin’s books. The husband was from Romania. He had fled the country a few years ago and now lived in Bradford with his wife who was Yorkshire born and bred. His wife smiled and said her husband still felt homeless. Colin looked the man in the eye and said, ‘You’ve married a lass from Yorkshire. You’re a Yorkshireman now. You’re one of us.’
The day went well in Wakefield with plenty of shared stories from people passing by and we made a few sales. At the end of the event Colin and I exchanged a couple of our books and I thought that was the end of that.
A pleasant surprise
A couple of weeks later I got an email from Colin saying how much he’d enjoyed reading Scrap. Scrap, he said, has Yorkshire grit running through it and he asked if I would be interested in applying to join Gritstone Publishing. The cooperative was looking to increase its membership from seven to eight or nine that year. Colin gave me an outline of the way the cooperative works regarding production of books, marketing, and collective support (see my previous blog).
It sounded interesting. He explained how the recruitment process worked: apply in writing outlining why I want to join the co-op and what I think I can offer; give details of the books I’ve published and the outline of any book I am working on; be aware of the need to attend meetings at Hebden Bridge three or four times a year; attend an informal interview at Hebden Bridge and meet the other seven members.
What’s to lose?
My application went off and a few weeks later Gritstone invited me over to Hebden Bridge for lunch at the Town Hall to be followed by an interview. It was a pleasant surprise to be treated with such civility, especially after a number of no replies from certain publishers.
I put on my best pair of jeans and caught the train from Brough to Hebden Bridge. What a lovely day it turned out to be. The other members of the co-op were as friendly and welcoming as Colin. Over lunch they quizzed me and I quizzed them before we all retreated to the interview room. I explained how Kicking Off, the novel I was working on, was, like my previous novel Scrap, a piece of social realism based on ordinary working people in Yorkshire. Gritstone liked my work and my story. Their main concern was whether to expand from their traditional publishing base of non-fiction writing covering mainly the outdoors, nature and landscape, and move into fiction writing preferably with a Yorkshire connection.
Success
I went home and carried on writing. Whether Gritstone wanted me or not, the experience had warmed me up and my writing went well for the next few weeks.
Then I got the offer to join the cooperative and I jumped in. Plenty of support from my colleagues and expertise at my fingertips. It’s grand.
If you think Gritstone is worth checking out and feel you would fit in, follow our website and look out for details of our next selection event planned for early 2026 to coincide with the cooperative’s 10th anniversary.
Mike Padgett is the author of Kicking Off, published by Gritstone
