Wound in the Salt

I suppose three trends have lead Salt Publishing to its current financial difficulties:

  1. The lack of a viable commercial strategy for poetry, although it’s hard to imagine that one could ever exist.
  2. The parlous state of UK arts funding, a Labour legacy that manages to be both unexpected and unsurprising.
  3. The impending doom of the publishing industry at the hands of the web and its ruthless cheerleaders.

If you feel like bucking those trends – and why wouldn’t you? Summer is here, and surely the recession hasn’t hit your wallet that hard – then heed the words of Chris Hamilton-Emery:

As many of you will know, Jen and I have been struggling to keep Salt moving since June last year when the economic downturn began to affect our press. Our three year funding ends this year: we’ve £4,000 due from Arts Council England in a final payment, but cannot apply through Grants for the Arts for further funding for Salt’s operations. Spring sales were down nearly 80% on the previous year, and despite April’s much improved trading, the past twelve months has left us with a budget deficit of over £55,000. It’s proving to be a very big hole and we’re having to take some drastic measures to save our business.

Here’s how you can help us to save Salt and all our work with hundreds of authors around the world.

JUST ONE BOOK

1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don’t mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you’ll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.
UK and International
http://www.saltpublishing.com/shop/index.php

USA
http://www.saltpublishing.com/shop-us/index.php

2. Share this note on your Facebook or MySpace profile. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it’s just one book, that’s all it takes to save us. Please do it now.

With my best wishes to everyone
Chris Hamilton-Emery
Director
Salt Publishing
http://www.saltpublishing.com

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under writing. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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