The Littoral Press is a not-for-profit small poetry press. It also publishes Mervyn Linford's prose and poetry along with a small amount of prose works written by other authors. The press has so far published about fifty books altogether, thirty or more of those being poetry collections from various authors other than the founder of the press.

Please read these terms and conditions carefully. I have spent an inordinate amount of time in the past reading manuscripts only to be told after acceptance that the poet didn't realise that we worked on a cost-plus basis and that they would now prefer to submit elsewhere. If you read this 'about us' section in full you will then be able to understand the reasons behind the way the Littoral Press works. Thank You. 

We work on a cost-plus basis. This means that the author is charged the cost of printing plus a small amount for expenses and contingency. There are no contracts with the Littoral Press. The copyright remains 100% with the authors to do with as they wish. All our books have an ISBN number, therefore they are subject to Legal Deposit. This ensures that five copies of each poetry collection are housed in the archives of Oxford, Cambridge, Aberystwyth, Edinburgh and Belfast universities and one other copy is sent to the British Library. All published collections will also be featured on the Littoral Press website. At one time we worked hard at selling our books through the normal retail outlets but found that poetry collections could remain on the bookshelves for months, even years, or were lost or so well thumbed that they became unsaleable. From personal experience sales are more easily achievable through talks, readings, book fairs and the generosity of one's friends and relatives.  That is why we now leave the distribution of our poetry collections in the hands of our individual authors. We do have accounts with the major book distributors, such as: Gardiners and Coutts and as such can act as middle man for any poets wishing to deal with any retail outlets. The Littoral Press receives orders from bookshops through the ISBN people (Nielsen Book Data). We then send the order to the poet in question. After we receive payment from the buyer we then reimburse the poet by cheque. Our enquiries have found that all of our poets so far have more than covered their initial outlay and as we live in the digital world of POD (print on demand) - small print runs are the order of the day and additional copies can be ordered in small quantities at any time. We have found that our system works well and as we only publish a limited number of collections that we consider to be of the highest order the name of the press is now well established as a respected poetry publisher. Unsolicited poetry submissions are always welcome electronically to our address on the Contacts Page. Please send all Mss in a simple Microsoft Word Document or RFT. No fancy formatting please as that plays havoc with our system. Sadly there will be far more rejections than acceptances. This is par for the course I'm afraid - as I know from my own experience and a very thick collection of rejection slips! Nevertheless, if the work deserves to be in the public domain we will do our best to get it published.

The reason that Littoral Press works in the way it does on a cost-plus basis is mainly because it receives no funding whatsoever from any source other than the publisher's - i.e. my own pocket. Other small presses that do not receive a grant or any other outside financial assistance will usually ask if the poet would purchase a certain amount of copies of their collection at a discounted rate to help cover the cost of production. I decided against this approach. My cost-plus system is invariably cheaper per copy than the discounted copies purchased from most other small press publishers.