My thanks to David Polfeldt at Li’l Factory for generously sending me copies of the first four books from his new publishing imprint. Li’l Factory is based in Sweden but publishes in English, and describes its mission thus:
Li’l Factory is focused on publishing odd stories that find no other home. The authors may be young and looking for their first breakthrough, or they may be veterans sitting on material that is rejected by trad publishers. Li’l Factory aims to make a string of beautiful books that reach breakeven and gives the author a boost to continue their work.
All the books published so far are science fiction, the first three of these—Burns by David Polfeldt, Brain Fruit by Stephen Oram, and Mimeograph by Eira A. Ekre—being short stories presented as standalone works. The fourth book—Into the Great by Elliot Blake—is novel length. At the time of writing I’ve only read the first three so it wouldn’t be fair to attempt a review of the quartet, but I can tell you that Burns deals with the solitary existence of a self-aware space probe searching for alien life; Brain Fruit is an account of a three-way act of symbiosis in which a bee, an insect and a fruit have to work together as a single organism in order to advance their evolution; and Mimeograph concerns a near future in which replication machines (“Mimes”) have become so skilfully attuned to the needs of the people they serve that they start to remake the world, with increasingly dramatic consequences. Of the three I preferred Mimeograph, probably because it shades into horror in its second half, as apocalyptic science fiction tends to do.
One thing all the books have in common is the care taken over their presentation, a combination of quality materials, good design and expert typesetting. Publishing books in this manner is always a brave and commendable act; brave because I know from my own experience with small publishers how hard it can be to flourish in a difficult market. But David Polfeldt is off to a good start, and the formatting and design could easily catch the attention of readers who like to collect books when they’re presented like this. His imprint isn’t concerned solely with science fiction either, the submissions page of the Li’l Factory website mentions that fantasy would also be welcome. The submissions window is currently open for anyone with a homeless (and suitable) manuscript. As for what might count as suitable, the taste references are a useful guide.