He later founded the publishing house Savoy Books with David Britton in 1976 and the contemporary art journal Corridor8 with Sarajane Inkster in 2009.
His publishing career began during 1968 with the small press literary magazines Concentrate, Corridor and Wordworks with Jay Jeff Jones as associate editor.
After the decrease of popularity of New Wave products, and seeking to support his young family as a single parent, during 1976 Butterworth began a series of fantasy and television tie-in commissions.
The first of these, The Time of the Hawklords, was a fantasy novel categorised as being in the space-rock genre, based on the stage personas of the rock band Hawkwind.
[2] A third novel in the Hawklords trilogy is Ledge of Darkness illustrated by Bob Walker; this was only available as part of a Hawkwind 4 LP retrospective box set '25 Years On' in 1994, which never got proper distribution.
From 1980 to 1997, 'clean-up' campaigner Police Chief Constable of Manchester, James Anderton, targeted Savoy Books and their Manchester-based retail outlets.
Nor did it prevent the eventual destruction of thousands of graphic editions of Lord Horror and Meng & Ecker seized by the police during related raids.
The appeal of these was hampered by the prosecution's plea of Public Interest Immunity when the defence asked them to say why they thought Butterworth & Britton were not serious publishers.
This contained, as well as fiction and graphics, Butterworth's account of the police activity and court case resulting in Britton's first imprisonment.
From 2011, he has been contributing short fiction and poetry to Emanations, the annual anthology edited by Carter Kaplan and published by International Authors.