Salt Publishing

An e-merging issue

Salt's blogs are coming together as one.

We've realised that navigating our numerous blogs is confusing.

So we've decided to make your task easier. Yes, we're going to merge some of our blogs into one regularly updated, easy to find hub of news, reviews and information.

The Salt blog is on its way......soon.

For now, keep an eye out for:

- Our latest news, releases and promotions: Salt Confidential
- Our office shake-up: Office Life
- The latest virtual book tour: Cyclone

After the deluge - Salt's office shake-up

So, after some extraordinary things happened earlier this year, we're back on our feet and busy working on a new way of doing things.

Since arriving home from Melbourne, I've noticed a renewed air of positivity in the office. And a couple of new faces too. Sarah-Jayne and Gretel have added awesome support to our admin, marketing and sales operations, along with bringing some fantastic new ideas. Not to mention Chris, Jen and Charlotte working tirelessly to pull the business in its new direction.

I also have a new role - of a more technical nature. Keeping our database and website up-to-date is vital in maintaining good contact with authors, booksellers and reviewers, but it also creates a strong foundation on which to increase publicity and sales. This will be accompanied by a new integrated blog, more frequent email newsletters, and a focus on promoting both new releases and backlist titles.

And that's not the only thing that's changed. We've been shuffling around tables, rearranging offices and updating computers too.

Things take time, and you may not see the fruits of our inventions immediately. But we are working hard towards a sustainable (and enjoyable) future.

It's a pleasure to work here. We want to extend this pleasure to our readers, not only in the form of our books, but through everything we do.

One final letter from Melbourne

Dear Salt reader.

I arrived in Melbourne four months ago. At that time I was confidently looking forward to meeting a lot of Salt writers, and discovering how poetry in Australia was evolving.

Now I have only two weeks left. I feel that my task hasn't quite taken off.

Unfortunately, the week that I decided to begin my blogging adventures, Salt hit a financial brick wall. I found myself bombarded with questions from writers - 'what's going to happen to Salt?' I had no answers for them.

I felt that I was in no position (10,500 miles away) to advise on the happenings back at Salt HQ. Some authors were worried about their current publication date, others just concerned to see such a successful team in jeopardy. Meanwhile, Chris and Jen were facing the real possibility of losing the business.

The week that the Just One Book campaign was launched, I visited Collected Works bookshop in Melbourne. Salt sales were up, and the authors I met had all purchased at least one title in support. I managed to take away from my meetings with these authors a few interesting insights into the Melbourne poetry scene.

But these meetings were filled with a sense of foreboding. With such a prolific independent publisher as Salt in danger of collapsing, what future was there for everyone else? What future was there for new poetry altogether?

I ended that week disheartened. I am a poet, and to be considering a bleak future for the art was not something I had expected during my time here. I stopped arranging meetings with other writers, and instead started to consider what poetry meant to me.

With news filtering through from England that the Just One Book campaign was fast becoming a huge success, I began to realise what the poetry market was all about.

Chris and Jen's remarkable idea to turn Salt's plight into an online viral campaign was inspired. Sales exploded and I don't think anyone back at the office was expecting the onslaught of orders to be dispatched.

But it was the reaction of Salt's authors, reviewers and committed readers that led to the success of the campaign. It revealed to me that these people were Salt's market. For an indie press to survive, it needed the continued support of poets, academics, critics and committed poetry readers.

I was left with one question: Is this market sustainable enough to support new poetry in the future?

The rest of my time in Melbourne has been spent trying to answer this question. I believe that poetry needs to evolve in order to reach new audiences. Making poetry more accessible through the use of multimedia, visual and audio arts and the internet is vital. And in Melbourne I have seen examples of this.

I leave this city, once again inspired that poetry has new ground to break, new readers to engage. The future of innovative independent publishers like Salt is secure, so long as they support new ideas with the same confidence that Chris and Jen have shown in saving their business.

Lee Smith

Being your own agent: know the list you’re submitting to

There are almost no agents in poetry and short story publishing, this is because they can’t make any money out of the genres. You’ll have to work as your own agent in finding the right press. A common mistake in pitching books is poor research. Sending books to publishers you’ve never bought from, whose books you don’t know well, is like choosing a spouse by sticking pins in a telephone directory and ringing to ask if they’ll marry you. Get to know a list: its editors and authors and books. That includes actually buying stuff from your potential literary publishers.

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tags: 100 words of advice, getting published

Discoverability: for publishers, authors and readers, the Web provides collisions

If you’re not on the Web, pretty soon you won’t exist in the minds of readers. Only networked writers will survive. This is an issue of discoverability and of consumption. Being a writer has a lot to do with the three Ps: profile, publicity and presence. That’s Web presence. Out of thousands of books published each year we encounter very few and choose less from among them. The back story to a book is as important as the book itself. Readers must know you to choose you. This is a core competence in using the Web, because collision equals sales.

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tags: 100 words of advice, getting published

Why selling points matter

Most books have less than a minute to sell themselves to booksellers. A buyer in a store tends to ask a small range of vital questions. Have I heard of this writer? What’s special about this book? Why would anyone buy it? A sales rep will need some answers to these questions: ten second answers before they move on to the next title in the catalogue. Writers should spend time answering those questions, too. A ‘selling point’ is a compelling reason why a bookseller should stock your book against thousands of others. It’s rarely about the quality of the writing.

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tags: 100 words of advice, getting published,

The gatekeeper’s three questions

There are three questions I always ask myself when considering a new writer. 1. Is this work any good? 2. Can I sell this book? 3. Can I work with the writer. The answer to the first question is a given. The second question asks whether this great bit of writing has a market. The last question is the most important, life is too short to work with difficult people, so I will pass over a great book I can sell if I think the writer will take up more time than I can afford. Social skills really do matter.

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tags: 100 words of advice, getting published,

Publicity is the art of remembering your choices

Great writing doesn’t always make for great books. Lots of great books fail. In fact, commercially, most books fail. But some don’t. Those that don’t often have shared characteristics. The author has an anonymous audience (i.e. she or he doesn’t know everyone who reads them), the book is publicisable (i.e. it has hooks which people can remember) and it has zeitgeist (i.e. it feels it’s part of today’s world). Only one thing can be effectively managed there, the publicity. Three things about your book will be enough to sell it. Knowing what they are is the key to getting published.

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tags: 100 words of advice, getting published,

Beat the slush pile

The best way to beat the slush pile is to avoid it in the first place. Unsolicited submissions are the worst way to reach an editor, less than 1% succeed. Most editors are receptive to recommendations (some ask their writers to be on the look out for talent). In a people business like publishing, who you know really matters. Writing is social. A couple of recommendations from the right people will open doors for your writing. It reveals two things: firstly, other published writers think you’re worth investing in, and secondly, you are already building your profile and finding readers.

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tags: 100 words of advice, getting published,

Alex Pryce — Diary of a Salt Intern

Author photo © Susan Collins

Monday 25th May

The fact that the rest of the UK is enjoying a sunny bank holiday makes me feel slightly apprehensive as I dutifully present myself at the door to the Salt offices in Fulbourn at 9.30 a.m. Chris is most welcoming, and once we are settled down with a cup of tea (milk, no sugar, I note) he explains the basic structure of a publishing business. Much of this is new to me as an English student, but Chris makes it very easy to understand and soon the office whiteboard is full of graphs to do with front and back list sales projections. Chris makes it quite clear that Salt have struggled financially, and that the Just One Book campaign (which I’m already up to date on through Twitter and Facebook) is a very serious part of keeping the business afloat.

Chris and I had already decided that we wanted to work on audio production — something I know about from my project PoetCasting. I settle down to some real work and rustle up some guidelines to help Salt authors to produce podcasts of their own work. I’m suitably pleased with a productive first day at work, and I’m excited about the rest of the week.

Tuesday 26th May

I arrive by bus to Fulbourn and am pleased to see the office peopled this morning by Tom, Charlotte, Jen and Chris. Having made my introductions we set about approaching the direct website UK sales. Again, this is entirely new to me but I quickly find my way around the online sales details and the boxes in the store room. It is all hands on deck pretty much all day to hand pick, write and pack each of the orders, but I can’t think of a better way to familiarise myself with the Salt list. I’m pleased to see some of my favourite Salt books (The Ambulance Box, A Fold in the Map and Me and the Dead) are selling well.

This afternoon, Kirsty arrives in the office to give us a hand. She helps by writing the hand written notes for each package and we all end up giggling. Aside from the direct sales impact, the viral campaign has been attracting some very welcome press attention too and we are pleased to hear that Chris (who is currently working from home) will be heading down to London tomorrow for an interview for Newsnight Review. In the office, we wonder what he will wear …

Wednesday 27th May

Chris sets me to some database work this morning. I’m not totally unfamiliar with the concepts having studied the theory at A Level, but I feel a certain burden of responsibility – what if I accidentally delete the entire thing? Thankfully, I don’t — but I do email all the Salt authors (a considerable number!) to ask them to confirm their contact details and keep them informed of plans for Salt’s future. It is quite inspiring to see that despite the economic concerns, Salt are still innovating and looking forward.

A very positive post on the Just One Book campaign has appeared in The Guardian Books Blog — as well as hundreds of other places on the net. In literary terms, it seems Just One Book may be the largest and most successful viral on the net yet.

After I’ve completed this I continue with the packing of orders — although it is frustrating that some can’t be completed because the books have to come from the printers. Tom, Charlotte and I are climbing over the mounds of packages as we have run out of franking stickers — although they will arrive tomorrow.

Thursday 28th May

In the morning I update the author details that have been returned by email. I am initially tentative about the database (not least because I am using a Mac for the first time in years) but I soon come to grips with it. There are lots of messages of support landing in the inbox, and I email off some thank you notes too. Everyone is very touched by the support the Just One Book campaign has generated.

The franking labels have arrived, so the mountains of post can finally be moved — although it takes several sweaty and out of breath runs to the Fulbourn Post Office before we can see the office carpet. Books, even poetry books, weigh a lot in volume!

Andrea Porter, a Salt poet, arrives at lunchtime to read some of her poems into my microphone both for PoetCasting and her Salt author page. She brings cake too, and Jen and I heroically tuck in as it simply must not go to waste! Andrea records 10 poems from her collection A Season of Small Insanities.

Friday 29th May

Today is my last day with Salt, and I am sorry that my week has been so short! I didn’t end up making the coffee or doing photocopying; I was welcomed into the team and took a hands on role in a manically busy week.

Jen has brought her small woollen friends Travis and Lily to visit before Travis starts his world tour. We leave them alone for 5 minutes and find that they have caused havoc with the mail, climbing all over it. Jen also pursues me around the office with her camera until I relent and grudgingly smile — it seems I am much less photogenic than Travis.

We fill what orders we can, although we are eagerly expecting a delivery of paperbacks needed to complete lots of orders. Everyone heads across to the pub for a well earned lunch before heading back for one last push now the paperbacks have arrived. We spread them out and get through loads of orders in the final dying hours of the working week. There is no space for clock watching at Salt. I am satisfied by the piles of post I have left behind me, and the order screens seem largely completed.

I make my exit, accompanied by Cameron and Chris to catch my train home from the flat fens of Cambridgeshire to Leicester.