Nasty Women: The End of an Era

As a brand new publisher in November 2016, we had an idea. It was simple: to publish an essay collection of women writing about their own experiences of being a woman in the 21st century, those whose stories were often left out of the conversation at a time that felt significant and shifting. Four months later, after commissioning over 20 exceptional writers, a successful Kickstarter, and a whole lot of support from readers, came Nasty Women.

We’re here to tell you that, after five amazing years, Nasty Women will soon be going out of print. Most publishers wouldn’t really make an announcement of something like this - but as a seminal part of 404 Ink, and an important work at the heart of what we do, we felt improper to just let it fade away.

When we first commissioned our brilliant writers, we licensed their work for a year; then, after the amazingly positive reaction, we extended that to five. We’ve been talking for months about what to do as this contract term ends and we eventually came to the conclusion that it’s time to leave Nasty Women’s legacy as lightning captured in a bottle, a zeitgeist that impacted thousands of readers with honesty and no holding back, trusting us with empowering and thought-provoking stories and experiences.

Nasty Women saw our contributors read at events across the UK, the book featured in outlets from New York Magazine, Elle, Huffington Post and countless local and national outlets, blogs, and shares. It was nominated for many awards and was certainly the reason 404 Ink received many of our accolades across the subsequent year. It was praised by so many icons and heroes to many of us at 404 and the contributors that it still feels like a fever dream to look back on. It’s been such a wonderful journey, and achieved all and more that we hoped when it was that seedling of an idea on a very dark winter night.

So what next? The ebook will be available until 7th March 2022. The print copies of this final print run will sell through 2022 until they are gone, and then there will be no more print runs. It will still remain accessible as an audiobook via Audible for the coming years. While it’s the end in that no more new copies will be entering the world, it’s not entirely the end of the book’s availability or potential to reach new people.

While there will be no more reprints, the book is still out there in its many thousands. We’ve seen them in bookshops, libraries and more across the country (which still remains endlessly exciting), and saw some photos recently of spots in charity shops, which feels quite cool. Pick up a copy from 404, swing by your local indie bookshop and support them, head out into the wild and see if you can find a copy.

Nasty Women was born as a reaction, a feeling, and it seems fitting to close this chapter half a decade on, and leave a crack in the door for what could come next. The world has changed in these last five years and, naturally, so has feminism and the discussions around it. This era of Nasty Women has drawn to a close, we have ideas on how its ethos and spirit can live on, but that’s one for another day.