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Summer Salt

Is philanthropy the coming thing, or dead in the water, in British Arts?  Never have the filthy rich in Britain given as much as say the American Rockefeller or Carnegie did for the arts.  Try to name equivalent family dynasties here that support dance, music, poetry?  Okay, - but what about poetry?  Where are the new patrons?  For a while now, it has been HM - via a government that can no longer really afford to pay out, and then get spit in the eye.  Cameron's cuts will see some small presses and magazines fold, no doubt.  Even Salt, that innovative younger press with the great covers and wide list, faces ongoing difficulty - see its recent Facebook message:

Chris Hamilton-Emery July 14 at 2:23pm

I hoped I'd never have to write this note. The recession has continued to have a very negative impact on sales at Salt and we're finally having to go public to ask you to help support us.

Our sales are now 60% down on last year and have wiped out our grant and our cash reserves as we continue to market and publish what we can from what we believe is a great list. We've plans in place to help secure the business from November 2010 — though the books we'll be publishing won't deliver any real revenue until 2011. We're sorry to ask, embarrassed to ask, but we need your help to survive until then and if you were considering purchasing a Salt book, we'd dearly love you to do it right now. We've less than one week's cash left.

If you can help us, please do two things:

1. Buy one book from us — we don't mind from where, it can be from your local bookstore (they need your support, too), it can be from Amazon or the BookDepository. It can even be directly from us. But please buy that book now.

2. Please tell everyone you know to do the same. Buy just one book and pass it on.

If money is tight for you, too, you can simply write a review of any Salt book you love on Amazon. Or recommend a book to a friend.

You can visit our Web site right now, simply go to
http://www.saltpublishing.com/
and buy JustOneBook.

Remember too, that every book you buy directly from us gets a raffle ticket in our Big Summer Raffle — and you could win one copy each of the next 20 books we publish from 1 September.

Thanks for continuing to support us.

Chris
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Comments

Jane Holland said…
Thanks for putting this up on Eyewear, Todd. It really is serious and people need to mobilise and buy books NOW if they want to avoid losing this brilliant independent press.

I've bought six. And their first ever ebook, Miracle Boy by Pinckney Benedict, which is available on Amazon as a Kindle. I don't own a Kindle but downloaded a free version of Kindle for Mac onto my laptop by following an easy link on Amazon, and was reading the book within 3 minutes of clicking it.

So anyone reading this who wants Salt to keep publishing, please please go buy some of their books. www.saltpublishing.com

Thanks, Jane
Fri Jul 16, 10:25:00 am 2010
Anonymous said…
Salt's best and perhaps only hope is a big philanthropist coming out of the woodwork. £40,000 (the figure I've heard he needs)by definition is not large money for someone really rich. On the other hand the poetry community has supported him as much as it can already. The problem with this recession is that NOBODY has any spare money. It would be sad to see Salt go they have been so resilient and open.
Sally Evans
Fri Jul 16, 10:53:00 am 2010
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