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Dedalus would like to thank the 2,360 people from over 60 countries who signed the Dedalus petition to the Arts Council, but unfortunately this was to no avail. Dedalus lost its Arts Council funding in March 2008. Informa Plc, through its subsidiary Routledge Books, then most generously stepped in and gave us sponsorship for two years. But that sponsorships ends in March 2010.

Thanks to Routledge Books, Dedalus has been able to continue as an alternative to the commercial publishing sector. Since losing our Arts Council annual grant, Dedalus has won both The Pen/Book-of-the Month-Club Translation Prize in the USA and The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize in the UK for The Maias by Eca de Queiroz, translated by Margaret Jull Costa. Another of our books, The Bells of Bruges by Georges Rodenbach, translated by Mike Mitchell, was also on the shortlist of 6 for The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize in 2008. This year Magnus by Sylvie Germain, translated by Christine Donougher, has been nominated for The American Library Association Notable Book Awards and shortlisted for The Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize. We continue to find new English authors of great talent and this year we published two first novels, The Father of Locks by Andrew Killeen and Jeremy Weingard's Made in Yaroslavl. We have new translations underway, of both classic and contemporary fiction, from Danish, Estonian, Flemish French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish.

However, to continue Dedalus's role as a translation house and publisher of new fiction, we must find new sources of finance to replace Informa Plc's sponsorship. We have begun the search for new sponsors and also for patrons who will commit to giving Dedalus a fixed amount per year for the next 3 years. So far we have raised £4,000 from our patrons and donations. We need to raise £35,000 annually to fund our running costs.

Dedalus's running-costs are low as it has only one full-time member of staff and one part-timer. The Dedalus directors receive no remuneration whatsoever and Dedalus has never paid its shareholders a dividend. Any money Dedalus makes has always been reinvested back into Dedalus's publishing programme. Everyone connected to Dedalus is motivated by cultural rather than purely commercial concerns. Our hope is that some of our readers, or the institutions or companies they work for, might be able to sponsor Dedalus or become a Dedalus patron. This Christmas we hope our readers will buy record numbers of Dedalus books for Christmas presents, as increasing sales is the best way to assure that Dedalus has a future.

The more patrons we find the stronger the case we can make for receiving public money in the future. We lost our Arts Council funding after a record year, so it is hard to imagine that we will have access to public funding in the foreseeable future. Dedalus will apply in 2010 to the Arts Council for translation funding and reapply for Arts Council regular funding, beginning a public campaign, which we hope our supporters will back using all available means in an effort to have our annual grant restored for 2011/2012..

The Arts Council has recently set up a £40 million fund, called Sustain, to help arts organisations get through the recession, £4 million of which has just been allocated. This includes grants of £116,000 to The Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, (annual funding of £1,055,239 for 2009-10), £104, 000 to Dance Consortium Birmingham, (annual funding of £513,500 for 2009-10) £362, 600 to Nottingham Playhouse, (annual funding of £1,415,625 for 2009-10) and £750,000 to the English National Opera (annual funding of £17,951,274 for 2009-10). These organisations are no doubt worthy recipients of this extra funding but it does put into perspective the Arts Council's decision to stop Dedalus's £25,000 annual grant, despite Dedalus being one of the very few independent literary publisher in the UK that specialise in the translation of literary fiction and new English writing, both of which are Arts Council priorities for literature.

As part of our campaign we will submit our petition to the Arts Council, so if you have not signed it, please do so now and urge anyone you know who supports Dedalus to do the same.

The petition can be found at

www.gopetition.co.uk/online/16111.html

If you would like to make a financial contribution to Dedalus, or, ideally, become a Dedalus patron, please contact Eric Lane at info@dedalusbooks.com.