Unbound, the online trading name of United Authors Publishing Ltd, was a

privately held A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose Stock, shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in their respective listed markets. Instead, the Private equi ...

international

crowdfunded Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance, to fund projects "without standard financial ...

publishing company Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

. It was based in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, UK.

History

The company was founded by John Mitchinson, director of research for the British television

panel game A panel show or panel game is a radio or television game show in which a panel of celebrities participate. Celebrity panelists may compete with each other, such as on '' The News Quiz''; facilitate play by non-celebrity contestants, such as on ' ...

'' QI'';

Justin Pollard Justin David Pollard (born 30 January 1968) is a British historian, television producer, writer and entrepreneur. He is best known for his work on such films as '' Elizabeth'' and ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' and TV series including ''Vikings'' ...

, historian and ''QI'' researcher (who stepped back in 2014); and author Dan Kieran who left in 2022. In January 2025 the company went into

administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal: the process of dealing with or controlling things or people. ** Administrative assistant, traditionally known as a se ...

, leaving many of its authors owed tens of thousands of pounds in royalties they'd earned. Mitchinson and new CEO Archna Sharma bought the company later that month, promising to honour all projects and contracts. In May 2025, Sharma said that the new company, Boundless, will not pay existing authors what they are due unless or until the company "survives and thrives", in which case, they will still only make "goodwill payments". Authors voiced their opinions on the situation, notably, published on 4 June 2025,

Daniel Hardcastle Daniel John Hardcastle (born 23 March 1989), known online as Nerd³ or NerdCubed, is a British YouTuber, author and actor. Created in 2011, his YouTube channel primarily consists of video game-related content. As of December 2024, it has approx ...

(known by the pseudonym NerdCubed) made a commentary video on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

, suggesting major management failiures internally, remarking; "''the sales director, marketing manager, head of rights, communications director, head of finance, and three editors have all just left the company''","''238 people who this affects, and ive been speaking to them and each one has their own unique story about how unbound screwed something massive up''", "''we've had endless lies about almost every facet of the business''", concluding with: "''we've lawyered up, both individually, and in groups of authors''".

Projects

In 2016 Unbound launched a podcast called ''Backlisted'', involving a guest (typically a writer) share a book they love and why it deserves more coverage. Some bookshops now carry a Backlisted section due to the popularity of the podcast. In autumn 2017 Unbound launched ''Boundless'', an online literary magazine with a focus on long form writing and tackling the decline in

traditional media Old media, also called traditional media or legacy media, are the mass media institutions that dominated prior to the internet; particularly print media, film studios, music studios, advertising agencies, radio broadcasting, and television. Ol ...

. Arifa Akbar, former literary editor of ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', was brought in as the editor. In March 2021, the company announced a crowdfunder for ''42: the wildly improbable ideas of Douglas Adams'', a book based on

Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, humorist, and screenwriter, best known as the creator of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the ...

' papers, edited by Kevin Jon Davies. The book was published on 28 August 2023 () and became a ''Sunday Times'' number one bestseller.

Selected authors

The following authors were on the original launch list: *

Jonathan Meades Jonathan Turner Meades (born 21 January 1947) is an English writer and film-maker. His work spans journalism, fiction, essays, memoir and over fifty television films, many for the BBC. He has described himself as a "cardinal of atheism" and i ...

* Amy Jenkins * Rupert Isaacson *

Terry Jones Terence Graham Parry Jones (1 February 1942 – 21 January 2020) was a Welsh actor, comedian, director, historian, writer and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English, Jones a ...

References

External links

* 2010 establishments in the United Kingdom Book publishing companies based in London Crowdfunding platforms of the United Kingdom QI Publishing companies established in 2010 {{UK-company-stub