2nd in Trio of Posts about Publishing: Salt

Over at the How Publishing Really Works blog today is the second post in the set of three about my collection and how it came to happen. The first post last week was Yours Truly telling the story of The White Road and Other Stories, from book deal to book promotion. Now my wonderful publisher, Jen Hamilton-Emery of Salt, tells the story from her side, the struggles and joys of being a small press.

For a small press to survive and thrive, it has to find its niche. Forget trying to compete with the big guys; many of them happily sell shed-loads of books at a loss, aiming for quantity over profit and instead making their money on the selling of TV, film and translation rights. Small presses however have to think smart. They have to become known as the best in their chosen field, and some have done this extremely well, becoming the leading expert in areas such as welding (Woodhead Publishing) and autism (Jessica Kingsley Publishing). For literary publishers however, things are that bit tougher.

As Jen goes on to explain, it's so hard to compete for review space etc... with large publishers and their teams of publicists. But:

Despite this however, we remain positive. Positive that our sales will grow again, once people get over the fear of spending money and we won’t need to rely on those hard-to-get grants. And we continue to be proud of our publishing. Basically, we love our books. We love that we can publish work that we feel deserve to be shared with the world, without having to concern ourselves with whims and fads that the big players have to.

I am very proud to be published by Salt, they make beautiful books and they give opportunities to those of us who aren't "attractive" to the mainstream, for whatever reason. Read the rest of the blog post here, and don't forget that you can still enter the comp to win a free copy of The White Road and Other Stories, details at the bottom of the blog post!