Right!!!

I know anyone that says anything negative about Salt gets a flood of hate mail. But, I'm three sheets to the wind and I've had enough.

It is bad enough that Salt have sullied their wonderful catalogue of avant-poets with their Erotic Fiction. Mind you, I think a few of the Erotic titles are actually very good and even ground breaking. Not that I should be reading that kind of thing.

However, when an editor with a prominent profile starts shouting about alternative poetry being a lost cause it is detrimental to public perception and destroys all the hard work lesser known editors are doing in the field.

Alternative poetry is the only growth market in the publishing sector. Barclays Bank acknowledge this, they are very impressed by the entire scene. Even the literary clubs at Cambridge University are taking an interest since Sean Burn got nominated for the Michael Marks.

My biggest export market is Belgium, where I have exported nearly 1,000 books, my next biggest market is America, where they love British experimental poetry. What is Chris going on about?

Alternative poetry is getting bigger all the time, there are more brilliant publishers than ever springing up to publish it - Barclays told me this, but the amount of new presses I've seen emerge in the North West is very encouraging - and there are Degree courses in Alternative Literature springing up all over the place.

The future is bright. It's not Orange though, their customer service is shit.

Alec.

> Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 17:07:53 +0100
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Quote of the day by Chris Hamilton-Emery
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Tony is right about Salt getting good sales from bringing out 'long-
> overdue compilations' etc. and yes, those books had a readership. It
> all had a brilliant start, but to my mine they then blew it. There
> have been numerous criticisms of Salt's various decisions floating
> around over the past few years, many of them well founded (and some
> from personal experience) and they don't need repeating here. I think
> they simply spread their net too widely and so lost their initial
> readership They published too much, without being able to back-up
> individual books, and too much of what they began to publish turned
> out to be bland - there are some great books in there - but they are
> lost.
>
> In my opinion they should have taken the chance and concentrated on
> pushing the more exciting avant end of their list instead of trying to
> be everything to everybody.
>
> Tim A.
>
> On 2 Jul 2011, at 00:00, Tony Frazer wrote:
>
> > Not quite of this day, though. The statement was uttered (or typed)
> > in 2009......
> >
> > And the books from the early 200s that he mentions were often long-
> > overdue compilations of then almost-impossible-to-find poets of the
> > older generation, who had an audience. There were only so many under-
> > collected names like Chaloner, James and so forth.
> >
> > Tony
> >
> >
> >
> > On 1 Jul 2011, at 23:47, David Lace wrote:
> >
> >> Quote of the day by Chris Hamilton-Emery:
> >>
> >> "British avant-garde sales have dropped from a high in the early
> >> millennium of around 200 units first year sales (for most, not all)
> >> to around 50 or so, sometimes less. We just presumed that those
> >> buying the avant-garde were buying other poets or other poetry or
> >> simply buying elsewhere. There used to be a general market for
> >> British avant works (never much taste for it in the USA), that's
> >> disappeared for us now. It's making it almost impossible,
> >> commercially, for us to publish new avant garde talent. Some books
> >> have no demand at all now. It's just all dried up for us, really. I
> >> guess that happens."
> >>
> >> http://z11.invisionfree.com/Poets_On_Fire/index.php?showtopic=1478&st=0