Salt Announces an Expansion of Their Genre Offering With Critically-Acclaimed Historical and Horror Debuts, and a New Publicity Partnership
Salt Publishing have announced an expansion into genre and commercial fiction, along with four new debuts in the horror and historical fiction genres to be published in 2025. Salt’s recent acquisitions include The Cat Bride by critically acclaimed short story writer Charlotte Tierney, a thrilling and mesmerising animal transformation horror, to be published in April; and The Homecoming by journalist Zoë Apostolides, part ghost story and part mystery about isolation, memory, spirits and motherhood, to be published in July.
Also to come later in 2025 are historical debuts The Marriage Contract by Sasha Butler and The Foreshore by Samantha York.
Salt are also developing their non-fiction list, and will be publishing three non-fiction titles in 2025, including Finders, Keepers, Nicholas Royle’s memoir of collecting second hand books, and Sound Advice by Alan Green, a self-help book which draws on the transformative power of pop songs.
Salt’s literary list will of course remain a key focus, and next year will see the publication of exceptional literary fiction, poetry and short stories, including Shams, the new novel from the critically acclaimed Meike Ziervogel, based on her experience of working with refugees in Beirut; and I Hear You, the new collection of short stories from the award-winning Paul McVeigh.
In order to ensure that these titles reach the widest possible audience, Salt has retained award-winning communications agency FMcM to run an ambitious and strategic PR campaign, building brand awareness and supporting the press’s superlead titles through 2025. FMcM will aim to position Salt as a bold independent publisher with an outstanding heritage, targeting both trade and consumer audiences.
The move comes after Salt undertook a six-month review of the twenty-five-year-old company that has seen changes to every part of the business, including the recent appointment of a new international sales team.
Christopher Hamilton-Emery, Director of Salt Publishing, said: “We’ve long been admirers of FMcM. This new relationship marks a step change in our thinking about Salt’s communications and publicity as we embark on building our audiences and expanding our list in new directions.”
Sophie Goodfellow, Head of Genre at FMcM, said: “The team at FMcM has long been admirers of the visionary team at Salt and couldn’t be more thrilled to be part of their genre expansion. From spine-tingling horror to atmospheric historical fiction, and a brilliantly unique wellbeing title told through the medium of 80s music, we’re excited to spread the world about this exceptional list for 2025.”
About Salt Publishing
Christopher and Jen Hamilton-Emery founded Salt in their Cambridge kitchen in the late nineties, and over the course of the following decade published over four hundred poetry collections, working with writers around the world and winning various international prizes. The addition of further teams in Australia and the USA added to the development of the list, and ambitions rose to change the feisty indie into a broader trade publisher. New distribution deals led to ever greater outreach. International sales expanded. A rights team was created.
A short fiction list began to emerge in 2006, and by the end of the decade over fifty short story collections had been published. Salt expanded into general fiction and 2012 saw their first Booker Prize nomination with The Lighthouse. Salt had successfully pivoted into literary fiction and its reputation and sales grew.
Over one hundred novels have now been published and Salt has won, or been nominated in, over twenty literary prizes around the globe. Now, as Salt turns twenty-five, Kirsty – a senior journalist – has joined the Salt team and is developing their national marketing and publicity. The press is diversifying into historical and genre fiction, as they plan for a new golden era.