So long, Coast-folk!

Hi friends!

After a painful few months of trying to keep the lights on, we've decided to cut scope massively. I (Eryk) started PCP and so I'm taking care of shutting it down, too. I want to keep making books, though!

Here's the low-down:

• peregrinecoast.press will remain. I'm going to sell off all remaining third-party stock and keep it up as a way to buy PCP-published works only. Filmmakers Without Cameras, Unexplained Scotland, Transmission For Them are all staying.
  • The idea of running a shop was fun, but the admin quickly piled up.
  • I've just added some great new stock - Barkeep on the Borderlands, Hull Breach, The Blood Moon Vernissage, and Celestial Bodies are all absolute classics and now's your last chance to pick these up in the UK!
• This newsletter will shift, most likely, to an Eryk Sawicki newsletter. I've got a tidy little blog over at eryksawicki.com and these two will merge. I'm a mf'er with a lot of experience in RPGs and graphic design now and I will not, shall not be silenced.
  • I still want to shitpost, leave the ladder down, and shine a light on the process of making books. If this sounds good to you: welcome aboard! If you subscribed for the entity of Peregrine Coast Press, you might want to unsubscribe.
• Peregrine Coast Press will remain an imprint led by me. But it'll cover all the weird, varied stuff I've been up to recently: freelance graphic design, Kickstarting my recent game Milk Bar (more on this later!), union organising, and making books. I might rebrand a little - the name is a bit unwieldy, and I made the logo in 15 minutes over 2 years ago when I realised I needed business cards for the very first market I attended.
• We wave goodbye to Syd and Harry. These folks are fantastic and we wouldn't have achieved any of this without them. Please hire them! We're hoping to work on projects together in the future, but for the time being we're hugely overdue a break. I'm thanking these two massively for responding like... at all to my crazed message at some silly time of night asking "do you wanna start a publishing co-op together?".

We celebrate the past

Here's a few things we achieved in the last two years:

1. We published Sidekick in collaboration with Safe In Our World. This was such an incredible experience from start to finish. Working for ourselves on a project that is wholly good. Beating out every single sales record we've ever hit. Making lifelong friends. An absolute joy to be a part of.
2. We punched way above our weight. In our first year we turned over £20,000. In our second year we turned over £70,000 (nobody ask how much profit we made though lol). We became one of the main distributors of indie RPGs into the UK and Europe. We attended huge shows like UKGE, Dragonmeet, and Develop. In the last 8 months, we shipped 2,500 packages worldwide. All in our evenings, on top of full time jobs.
3. We crowdfunded two projects independently of Kickstarter. One of my obsessions is building an audience that we get to keep (so much so I gave a talk about it at Magazine Street last year!). No platforms, no closed gardens, no private capital. Just good ol' email and a whole lot of digital tape.

We look to the future

I'd love to give all this another go at some point in the future. Both PCP and SoulMuppet (where I work part-time) have taught me countless things about making books, selling books, getting those books across borders, and running a business. I skipped a few stages in all that time though so, for now, I'm looking forward to wrapping things up and getting to work on my own project(s?).

You might have seen that I recently crowdfunded my own project: Milk Bar.

It was a roaring success! Which I'm glad about, because it vindicated me spending more than a year thinking about it. If you follow the link above, you can still pre-order a copy :)

As a little treat for reaching the end of this email, have a cheeky discount code. Mostly as a thank you, little-ly because I have several boxes of books in my bedroom that I'd like to get rid of. Please buy them and free me.

The next time I reach out, this email might not come from Peregrine Coast Press. Whatever it ends up being, I hope you enjoy it just the same.

Chat soon!

Eryk