Scotland’s biggest book trade event took place last Wednesday. This annual conference is organised by Publishing Scotland and the Booksellers Association, and it is the only annual gathering of the Scottish publishing and bookselling industry. This year’s opening keynote speaker was Queen of Crime, Val McDermid, author of our Darkland Tale Queen Macbeth and the forthcoming This Door of the Seas. We were touched to hear her share the following thoughts:

‘Scotland is very strong in terms of independent publishers… not least because we have 2 languages (in fact we have 3 languages if you count English). These publishers extend the range of experience available to us. My experience with Birlinn and the Darkland Tales has been revelatory. This series breaks down the myths and legends and frankly lies that have become the accepted versions of our history.  And invites contemporary writers to take different angles, to tell a different story.

I was approached a few years ago to do Lady Macbeth –  do it for us, do it as a novella, you don’t have to stick to Shakespeare…. you can set it in modern day (that would be a good idea, a Scotland led by a strong Scottish woman with a vision…) or do it as historical Lady McBeth.

I had a whale of a time, I felt that the reins had been loosened and I could go anywhere and I did and I had great fun doing it. And as a result my partner and I have written a new book [for the series], This Door of the Seas, that deals with the Darien project – if you were lucky you heard about it at school… all I knew about it was that it was a terrible disaster, the Scots were useless. Mostly you hear about it like an episode of Black Adder, and that really is not the truth about what happened.  We wanted to find a way to tell this to a new generation, to tell the truth.

We wrote it as an epistolary novel, letters home from abroad as it was. No mainstream publisher would have taken that on, especially down south…. The thought that a mainstream publisher would be interested in something set in Panama in 1698 that just about broke Scotland… slim chance of that

But Independent publishers understand their market, understand the niche markets and understand there are people out there who want to know about all sorts of things. And they provide them with fodder for the imagination and for explaining the world to them. And they’ve had extraordinary successes…  they dive into niches and find unexpected readerships…

Indie publishers take a risk, take a chance, see a speck of gold in the dust and make something… shine. Because we are a nation of storytellers. This nation absolutely loves stories. We have been enjoying stories since way before we had books. Sitting round the fire telling stories, listening to other people’s stories. Every generation, every development in communicating stories, led to cries of doom and gloom for stories and books…  AI – well we have plenty of artificial stupidity, we don’t need artificial intelligence. It won’t happen. It will dent some areas of the industry but fundamentally human imagination is powerful and will change the world as it has done in the past. It will carry on changing the world.’

–            Val McDermid (this is an extract from Val’s keynote speech at Publishing Scotland conference May 2026)