New Guidelines for The Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses
Please read the below carefully
The RofC Prize has been awarded charitable status. With this comes certain responsibilities. The bullet points below aim to set out as clearly as possible our aims and purpose, and entrance eligibility for the prize.
Charitable Purpose as set out in our Constitution:
To promote for the public benefit the art of literature and in particular to promote literature of high merit published by small presses in the UK and ROI by providING grants to practitioners and produceRs of literary fiction and the promotion of such literature to the public.
Please see this short blog piece for the types of books we tend to reward.
Previously we have defined a small press as 5 or fewer full-time employees, including part-time workers, freelancers etc. This has caused a certain amount of confusion because of the different kinds of contributions. From now on our eligibility criteria is as follows:
A small press is defined as publishing no more than 12 books a year
And also:
an independent financial body
Which means not wholly or partly owned by any other financial body or business, or sharing costs within a group or partnership, even if the group or partnership comprises other presses. The prize was set-up to support presses taking financial risks by supporting creatively challenging work and cannot reward business that received financial benefit or favour from other commercial interests. For the sake of clarity support from arts grants do not fall under this restriction.
The information on this year’s judges can be found here.
Entry Information.
Only one entry per press
Entry requires a submission form, an Advance Information Sheet (1 side of A4), a pdf of the work, a hi-res image of the cover, and in order to keep up with information subscribe to https://therepublicofconsciousness.substack.com/
Opening date for this stage of submissions will be July 3st, 2023
Closing date will be August 31st 2023
If hard copies are called in, 4 copies need to be available by November 1st 2023
Long List end of January, 2024
Short List beginning of Feb 2024
Winner(s) beginning of March 2024
Prize Money and other Awards
The amount of prize money is subject to money raised between now an announcement of long list. All money awarded by the RofC Prize must be used to commission or produce work of high literary merit.
This year all longlisted presses will will be connected with the British Council Literature team who can offer market insights and international connections through their global networks. The longlisted publishers will also be invited to apply to participate in British Council publishing programmes and will receive invitations to their professional events.
We also hope to offer a number of shortlisted writers a 5-day writing retreat. Updates will be provided as we know more.
To request a submission form please fill out the form below and submit