Independent publishing is a hard row to hoe at the best of times and
publishing fiction is harder still. So it is heartening to find, in
the stableblock of a former coach house in a tiny mews in Hove, a thriving
business dedicated to 'punk' publishing of a high standard.
Codex Books, as it is called, is now owned and under the editorial control of Hayley Ann but was originally started by Simon Strong, a friend and Codex author, who was working for a small music label called Overground, dedicated to punk rock releases from the 1970s.
Simon
had the idea of a publishing imprint in 1994 and published Codex's first
book - Cranked Up Really High by Stewart Homes - the following year.
Hayley, aged 33, is from Basingstoke originally but came to study at Sussex University and has stayed in the area ever since.
She began working with Simon and ended up running Codex and doing distribution for Overground. When the label decided to reorganise or possibly close, Hayley took the opportunity, in 1998, of developing Codex just the way she wanted and as her own company, which she set up using a small amount of money she had received after her father's death.
It was leap of faith that seems to have paid off, with some 15 titles already in print and five or six due this year. These include Billy Childish's poems and novels, Richard Hell's novella The Voidoid and, most recently, Crucify Me Again by Mark Manning, formerly known as Zodiac Mindwarp.
Hayley says: 'My remit with Codex is to publish stuff that is unrepresented, that is challenging in different ways, whether that means novels by gay authors or works that have an experimental structure.
'The mainstream has little imagination and is always trying to guess trends. The book trade is particularly difficult - the mega book chains are restructuring themselves - and many small publishers and distributors are going out of business. Noone knows how it is going to go.'
Coming soon from Codex are Junk DNA by Tania Glyde, and Neighbourhood Threat: On Tour with Iggy Pop by Alvin Gibbs, a first-hand memoir from a former member of Iggy's band in the 1980s. .
John May
Black and white images from 'Crucify Me Again'
