Hermit Crab Press is a small, family publishing house founded by Paul and Navjyoat Kingsnorth in 2026. We exist to publish books, pamphlets and other awkwardly non-commercial creations by Paul, and potentially other writers in future.

We want to spend our time making handsome physical books, which give pleasure to all the human senses. All of our books are printed on high quality paper and card, carefully designed and crafted to be distinctive items. Each one is signed by the author.

In future, we plan to produce leather-bound special editions, hand-carved leather bookmarks and various other goodies, all in line with our underlying philosophy: to make human-scale things in an increasingly inhuman world.

Paul and Navjyoat are a husband and wife team who have lived on a smallholding in County Galway, Ireland, for the last twelve years. Before that, they lived in England, where they both grew up. They have two children, one of whom, Leela, will also be helping to produce Hermit Crab books.

PAUL KINGSNORTH
Writer and publisher

Paul Kingsnorth is the author of eleven books, with two more in the pipeline. He has at various points in his life been an environmental activist, a Fleet Street journalist, a novelist, a poet, a publisher, an editor and a door-to-door double glazing salesman. You can read more about Paul and his work on this page. Hermit Crab publishes work by Paul that cannot be found anywhere else.

NAVJYOAT KINGSNORTH
Publisher

Navjyoat is a former consultant psychiatrist turned gardener, home educator and, now, publisher. She has a special affinity with plants, and an admiration for sacred geometry and the patterns found in nature. She also has a lifelong love of hermit crabs.

LEELA KINGSNORTH
Bookbinder and leather worker

Leela is a longstanding lover of books, and an award-winning writer of short stories. She is currently studying for a foundation degree in bookbinding, as well as learning and practicing leather working and other traditional craft skills. Leela will be binding future special editions, as well as producing limited edition leather bookmarks and other goodies for the press.

We believe that a book should be a beautifully made thing. A good book does not just contain good writing - though we hope that ours contain that. It should also have its own unique texture, look, and even smell. A good book should last a hundred years. You should be able to put it on a shelf, look up at it with pleasure, and take it down to read with even more. Like a human, a book is a thing that exists only in the real world. It can never be reproduced on a screen; and why would you want it to be?

There is a kind of eros to a good book. You can have a relationship with it. It can be a good friend, or a reliable companion. The medium is always the message. A real book can be scribbled on, cherished or physically gifted to a friend. You can turn its corners down and underline your favourite words or phrases.

In an age of AI fakery and all-round digital tedium, Hermit Crab Press is attempting to walk in the other direction.

Every Hermit Crab book has an immediately recognisable feel and look to it, but each of our titles is also distinctive. Every title is printed in a different colour on a different texture of card with an original woodcut cover image. Each book is printed on beautiful, thick, long-lasting paper with cardboard cover flaps, and signed individually by the author. A library of Hermit Crab books, we hope, will be a beautiful thing on anyone's shelves.

All of our books are designed in north Wales by our old friend Andy Garside, who worked with us back in the days of the Dark Mountain Project.

The illustrations on our book covers - and on this website - are created by stone- and wood-carver Ewan Craig in his workshop in the Georgian city of Bath, England.

Our titles are printed by Gomer Press, an award-winning, fourth generation family-owned business in west Wales. Gomer prints our books on FSC-certified paper, works with the World Land Trust to reduce its carbon emissions, and runs on 100% renewable energy.

When they arrive at our little garden HQ here in the Irish west, our books are personally signed, packed by us by hand, and posted out to you from our local post office in County Galway.

This website is our only home on the internet, and the only place you can buy our books, unless you come across us in person at the occasional public event.

We don't sell on Amazon. We don't do e-books or audiobooks. We don't even do ISBNs. Everything is as human-scale as we can make it.

We are a small family team and we endeavour to post your book within a few days of  purchase. Our books are packaged in recycled and compostable padded envelopes or  book wrap mailers. We try to avoid the use of plastic if at all possible.

We will post your book to you with AnPost, the Irish Postal service. You will receive a  personal email once it is on the way to you.

Hermit Crab Press is entirely funded by its readers. Any purchase you make, or  any donation, is ploughed into making more books and keeping the press going.

Artificial 'Intelligence' kills art, insults the human spirit and turns everything it touches into soulless dreck. If it is not actively evil (and the jury's out), it is actively changing the world for the worse. It represents a watershed in human history. Never before has a machine been able to 'speak.' Never before have stories been told by anything other than a human.

We don't know where this is going, but we know where we draw the line. Hermit Crab Press does not use AI at any stage in its production processes, and we will not work with authors, illustrators or designers who do. We are signatories to the Writers Against AI pledge, which was launched by Paul in 2026.