From late 2009 until the end of 2024, I was the founding publisher at Signal 8 Press. My original business partner and I established it in Hong Kong in hopes of providing a platform for authors writing in, from, and/or about Asia in English. At that time, there were any number of exciting presses in the Asian anglosphere, but very few publishers were trying to take a more international approach. Also, around the same time, e-books were just taking off. The convenience of Amazon’s Kindle device and store concept was revolutionary, not just for authors but for publishers wanting to get in on the game early. That’s how we also got into e-book distribution for other publishers around the region, as well as for authors who wanted their backlists digitally reprinted. By the time we reached our peak, whenever that was, we had something like 150 books in print – either our own original titles or e-book reprints.

We had to put our operations on hiatus a couple of times. During the final year of my PhD, I was too overwhelmed to focus on publishing. This coincided with the publication of a very complex pair of anthologies, the kind of situation where everything that could possibly go wrong does. Just as we were beginning to return to what we hoped would be normal operations, everything in Hong Kong went to hell in 2019-20. During that period of conflict, my current business partner and I decided we would be safer to keep as low a profile as possible, so we suspended work again and joined the exodus out of a place we had both called home for a very long time.

Not long after I moved to the UK in 2020, we formed a new corporation here and quietly relaunched with a more eclectic, less Asia-focused remit. It quickly became clear that I’d run out of bandwidth. Partly it was to do with the aftermath of trauma: the state violence and the pandemic took a toll. Partly it was about having a much busier job. And partly it was that I needed to focus on my own creative work instead of other people’s (students excepted). 

At the time of this writing, Signal 8 Press will formally sunset in early 2025. We had a hell of a good run, helped launch a few careers, and worked with some amazing writers. I’m glad we did it. I’m also glad we’ve started a new chapter.

 

MM

Truro, England

2024