About Batis Books
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Batis Books is a small, independent publishing company based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
What Is a batis?
A batis is a small bird found throughout Southern Africa. You might not notice them at first, but they're there.
A Cape batis(Batis pririt)/ Photo by Alan Manson
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What we publish
We publish an armful of good books a year – maybe six, maybe more. We publish literary novels, collections of stories, collections of poetry, and selected books of non-fiction. We publish books in translation, including but not exclusively from African languages, into English.
Our 2026 list focuses on writers from South Africa and Scotland. Our lists in 2027 and 2028 include writers from additional Southern African countries, and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere.
Submissions
We are open to submissions of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as translations of books into English from other languages.
You do not need to have an agent to approach us, but you must please read our submissions page for our submissions process.
Distribution
All of our books are distributed in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland by Combined Book Services and marketed to the trade by Compass IPS.
Books sold through this website are dispatched by Combined Book Services.
Select Batis titles are available in all good bookshops in South Africa, as well as in some bookshops in Namibia and Botswana. In these countries Batis Books are distributed by Booksite and marketed to the trade by Blue Weaver.