“The impact on the economy is, in the short-run, going to be entirely negative,” writes former European Minister Neill Denny on Publishers Weekly of Brexit’s effect on the book publishing industry.

“This is a result that will cost jobs in the book trade as it will in the wider economy,” he adds. “The destabilising effect of the decision will hit consumer confidence and spending, and may immediately trigger a recession. None of this will lead to people buying more books. Years of uncertainty will follow. Yes, tariffs on imports may fall, but it will be a long time before the economy is back on track.”

Denny, who published the prophetic book, Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe with publisher I.B. Tauris last May, is one of many authors and publishers who have taken to social media to voice criticism of Britain’s vote to exit the European Union. Prior to the decision, several other authors had written articles about why Brexit would be a disaster for British publishing; Denis MacShane said in a post at The Bookseller dated March 2, 2016:

One of the big changes of my life is to go all over the continent to high-end bookshops, railway bookstalls, supermarkets and hotel bookshelves, where I see any number of British authors on sale both in English and in translation. ... Outside the single market, with Brits losing their European citizenship with the right to live, travel and work anywhere in Europe, the easy unfettered access for anything produced or marketed from the UK would meet new obstacles.

“Leave” campaign supporters, however, think these claims are exaggerated, including literary agent Diane Banks of Diane Banks Associate, who wrote at The Bookseller that the UK does not need to “shackle ourselves to an insular, dictatorial sinking ship.”

Peirene Press has released an open letter representing the “cultural case” for staying in the EU, and has garnered several hundred signatures.

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