You may have noticed we changed our discount code from 25% to 10%

Okay so here is the premise of this blog: you like our books, you buy our books, the outdoor environment and the fun you have in it is important to you, and you care about us and how we are doing. If not, it’s probably not worth reading much further.

Vertebrate publishing lives in two worlds. Firstly, we are an outdoor business; we are outdoor enthusiasts, runners, climbers, swimmers, cyclists and keen walkers. We produce books and guides we want to read or use ourselves. We are also a publishing business – one of the biggest of the specialist publishers in the UK – but in both those spheres we are really quite small. There is only a handful of us, trying our best!

In recent years, the book publishing industry has been undergoing a quiet revolution –one shaped by rising production costs, collapsing business models, and changing consumer behaviour. While books remain culturally vital and emotionally resonant, both as a reader or as an outdoors person, however the economic environment in which they’re produced and sold is more fragile and volatile than it’s been in decades. Nowhere is this clearer than in the recent downfall of the previously much championed publisher Unbound, a once-promising crowdfunding publisher that folded under financial pressures. Their story – and the broader trends surrounding it – offer timely lessons for authors, publishers and readers alike.

The rising cost of printing: a silent strain

One of the most immediate and tangible challenges facing publishers is the rising cost of paper and printing. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the global supply chain for paper products has been disrupted by mill closures, shipping delays and increased demand for cardboard and packaging. Even in 2025, the ripple effects are still being felt.

Our printing costs have increased by as much as 30–50% over the last three years. This inflation eats directly into the already-slim margins that publishers like ourselves operate under. As a small publisher we are especially vulnerable, as we don’t have the scale to negotiate better rates but we have been able to mitigate this somewhat by paying our printers promptly, being loyal – offering long term business, and being intelligent with timings and quantities of printings.

These rising costs don’t just impact profitability – they also shape what kinds of books we can keep in print or publish. Print runs are getting shorter, with debut authors or book ideas struggling to break in, and riskier or more experimental titles are being passed over in favour of ‘sure things’. We like to think we do a few risky titles which we believe have literary merit – for example the really quite excellent Peaks and Bandits, or the forthcoming And So I Run, but if you simply follow a spreadsheet to its inevitable conclusion, you just wouldn’t publish these titles. So, if the printed book is becoming a more expensive and riskier proposition, can digital formats, ebooks, print on demand or audio do some of the heavy lifting? The answer is ‘maybe’, but really the returns on these formats can be shockingly small, with barely a trickle making it back to the author. As the distribution channels for digital formats become dominated by big tech, the challenge for publishers is to try to maintain pricing integrity.

The fall of Unbound: a cautionary tale

Unbound, the UK-based crowdfunded publisher, offered an exciting alternative to traditional publishing. Founded in 2011, it promised to democratise the industry by allowing readers to fund the books they wanted to see in the world. Authors kept more creative control and were empowered to build their own audience. For a while, it worked. Books like The Good Immigrant and Letters of Note became bestsellers, and Unbound raised millions from backers who were eager to support unique, author-driven projects. These ‘new’ publishing models are always interesting, after all, the heather over that side of the wall looks just that bit more purple than the heather this side.

But in March, Unbound entered administration. It left many authors in limbo, with unpaid royalties, unfinished projects, and readers demanding refunds. The reasons were complex – declining crowdfunding revenue, logistical challenges in fulfilment, and unsustainable overhead – but at its core, the collapse underscored how fragile the economics of publishing can be, especially for companies operating outside of traditional models. We too have crowdfunded books, recently Do Not Block Gate, and I do understand the realities of the economics. It is easy to look at the ‘money raised’ big number and not the plethora of costs that then come to take slices of the pie.

A key lesson from Unbound’s failure is that innovative business models still require operational discipline and financial sustainability. A publisher also needs to look after its authors and its readers.

Where books are sold now: a changing marketplace

Even as the production side of publishing becomes more challenging, the way books are sold and the way our books are sold is also evolving. Traditional brick-and-mortar book and outdoor stores are no longer the dominant retail channel. Chain stores like Waterstones still matter (a bit), but independent stores have experienced both a renaissance and a reckoning – buoyed by loyal local audiences, but burdened by cost hikes and inventory pressures. For the outdoor stores, books just don’t make as much money as the latest colour Gore-tex; and for the bookstore, we don’t fit within any neat genre – maybe thrillers?

Our book market has shifted online. Amazon remains the dominant force but other platforms are rising. Bookshop.org, launched in 2020 to support independent bookstores through online sales, continues to grow. However, it is our direct-to-consumer sales from our authors and our website that remain our most important channel. For many reasons direct purchasing from our website or from an author event is key to our success.

Moreover, for us, social media – mainly Instagram and Facebook – have become powerful discovery engines. This decentralization of recommendation power has made the market more exciting, if a little unpredictable. A book no longer needs a major publisher or marketing budget to succeed. It just needs visibility in the right community, and at the same time we need to get to know that community – for which social media can be so good.

Lessons for the future

The publishing industry today is a study in contradictions. Demand for books remains high, but the economics of producing and selling them are increasingly strained. Innovation is thriving, but often at great risk. From the collapse of Unbound to the rise of BookTok, the industry is evolving in ways that reward adaptability over tradition, just like the outdoor industry – gone are the map cases and the red woolly socks but we welcome generations of new explorers looking to get the best out of their adventures.

As a publisher, it’s about finding efficiencies without sacrificing editorial integrity. And for readers, it means staying conscious of how and where they buy books – because every purchase decision now has a larger impact on the ecosystem of both the outdoor and the book industry. We want you to buy books – actually, we want you to use books to inspire your explorations, to make them more adventurous and, hopefully, safer.

Books are far from dead. But the business of making and sharing them is in a period of radical transition. The future of publishing will be shaped by those who are able to balance innovation with sustainability – and who never forget that, at its heart, the industry exists to serve the timeless bond between writer and reader. We know we haven’t broken that bond by moving our discount level down a notch and we hope you trust us to use your purchases to fund our future titles.