In April last year, in response to growing concern about the publishing industry’s impact on the climate crisis, the Society of Authors (SoA) launched Tree to Me, a campaign designed to raise awareness with authors about sustainability in the publishing industry, and to help authors discuss the sustainability of their books with their publishers.

The campaign provides authors with ten questions they can ask about the sustainability of key steps in their books’ production. As well as raising awareness by encouraging information sharing between authors and publishers, the aim of Tree To Me is that – with so many authors contacting their publisher – the demand, importance and urgency of the changes required across the industry are made clear to publishers.

To mark the anniversary of Tree to Me, we caught up with several authors to hear about their experiences discussing sustainability with their publisher, using the campaign’s ten questions.

An issue impossible to ignore

To get a sense of different author experiences, we spoke with authors from different disciplines, with publishers ranging from the big four to small indie outfits, and with authors who are both traditionally and self-published. Several authors have backgrounds in sustainability: one had studied environmental sciences at university, and another was previously a forest campaigner working on international campaigns on paper. For others, sustainability is simply an issue that has become impossible to ignore.      

Several authors told us that the climate crisis was a key motivator for writing in the first place. This was the case for Ray Star: ‘I closed my business of 15 years because I wanted to try and make a difference. I thought: “I’ll write stories and do it that way”’. Self-published author, Chris Rhodes, told us: ‘it occurred to me that children are going to be challenged in all sorts of ways in the times to come. I put this story together for my niece who was four then – she’s 29 now’.

For others, it was when writing about climate change that the difficulty of sustainability in publishing most came into view. Comics’ creator Zara Slattery’s upcoming book is ‘about the environment […] it’s an integral message’. For that reason, she needed ‘the actual process’ of producing the book to reflect that message. This ambition was reflected by others: ‘my books fall under vegan fiction and climate fiction’, Ray Star told us, ‘but for me to get my story out there, trees have to be cut down. What’s then more important?’. This issue of reconciling the sustainability of the physical object of the book – the pages, the inks, the fuel required to transport it, and more – with the message on the page was ultimately what led these authors to Tree to Me. As Star told us: from ‘an ethics point of view, I didn’t have a choice’.

Important conversations

For the most part, the authors we spoke with felt some trepidation when starting these conversations, which is understandable: discussing sustainability with your publisher can seem daunting, regardless of your individual relationship with them. 

One author told us: ‘when I first saw the questions I thought: “I should ask them”. But at the same time, I was a little nervous about doing it’. In fact, their publisher had sold themselves to them based on their sustainable credentials, but the author still wanted to hold them accountable on the details. Nervous, they delayed asking the Tree To Me questions, but ‘once [the publisher] had replied to me so positively and was keen to answer the questions, I felt really silly. No, [publishers] take this stuff seriously’.

Another author told us: ‘it’s difficult as an author to instigate that conversation, because my relationship is with my editor and I want them to like me and to like my book. And I don’t want to rock the boat’. A seasoned author of over ten books, they told us: ‘if you’re not a best-seller, it’s very easy not to have an ongoing relationship’. That author did contact the publisher with the questions though; at the time of our interview, they were still waiting to hear back, having been directed to different departments. ‘I will continue to bug them until I get a response’, they told us.

The same author’s other publisher was more forthcoming. Dealing with a small operation of about four staff members – all of whom they knew personally and would ‘hate to rub up the wrong way’ – they told us the ten questions were ‘a really useful way of enabling me to have a conversation that might otherwise be quite awkward to begin. To say: “hang on, I’ve been asked to ask you this” […] it’s been really helpful’.

Several authors described specific conversations with publishers as ‘easy’, either having had lengthy discussions about sustainability with staff in the past, or because they were on personal terms with the owner. ‘But if I didn’t have that kind of relationship’, Star told us, ‘I can totally understand how an author would think: “if I ask them this, are they going to ditch me?”’. ‘But’, she told us, ‘I would say this: there’s no harm in asking […] the worst that’s going to happen is they’re going to say: “we’re not comfortable disclosing this information’’’.

There was consensus from all authors we spoke with that posing the Tree to Me questions was useful beyond simply enabling these conversations. One author told us that they were ‘galvanised’ by engaging with their publisher over how ‘the process of the book [could] match the content of the book’ so that they could ‘get the book to be as green as it can be’.

All of the authors – including the self-published author, Chris Rhodes – said the Tree To Me questions were useful for self-reflection and led to a greater awareness about the impact of the different stages of book production. They all have, or will, share the campaign with readers and other authors to raise awareness. Similarly, they told us they would use the questions in any future dealings with publishers.

Positive steps

If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that we must keep having these conversations. These testimonies show how receptive publishers are to discussing book sustainability, which mirrors the SoA’s own experience of publishers expressing eagerness to engage with authors on the questions.

We must also do better to share information on sustainability with readers, including celebrating successes in sustainability. In several cases, before these conversations, it wasn’t clear to authors what work publishers were undertaking to become more sustainable, and this information wasn’t accessible online.

If we can excite readers about the important work publishers and authors are already doing behind closed doors, we can work towards progress that is self-perpetuating. As one author put it:

‘The best way to get any kind of company to do something, regardless of whether it’s in publishing, is through their customers. So, readers need to be aware of this, and then, if readers are aware and asking for it, you can pretty much guarantee that publishers will start doing it.’

What can authors do?

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to contact your publisher with the Tree to Me ten questions. Please also ask fellow authors to do the same and continue to share the campaign widely.

If you’ve discussed these issues with your publisher, please consider ways of communicating the information you’ve learned with your readers, whether to celebrate where sustainable gains have been made or simply to raise awareness that these conversations are happening.

• Sign up to our Sustainability Network, for updates on all our future sustainability work and our sustainability events
• Sign up to our Sustainability Network meeting on 14 October
• Sign up to Publishing Declares
• Catch up on our past sustainability events
• Catch up on our SoA Advisory Clinic podcast special episode ‘Tree to Me Campaign: My Books Shouldn’t Cost the Earth’ with Piers Torday