Change the names and the currency and all of your posts on this describe the US situation as well, down to the smallest details. 

Questioning Chris' integrity seems mean-spirited. He did what he could with what was possible, given his needs.

When I set out to do Junction Press I calculated what I could afford to lose each year, if I took no salary and did all the design and typesetting myself. Usually I meet that goal.

My most recent publisher, Charles Alexander of Chax Press, considers 300 copies of a poetry title sold a best seller. My own experience as a publisher is that even books by what to me seem world famous poets often don't sell that many, and they often go unreviewed or obscurely reviewed, not that (as Tony says) reviews seem to make much difference. The best and most reliable customers, alas, are the poets themselves, who get the books discounted 40%. Some of them sell books at readings, but a reading with 50 in attendance rarely yields more than a couple of sales.

To keep going one needs the time and energy and another means of support, and the desire to do so.

Best,

Mark

-----Original Message-----
>From: Tony Frazer <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Jul 20, 2013 2:53 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Salt poetry editor Roddy Lumsden=?windows-1252?Q?=92s_?=comments about the BritPo list.
>
>They kept going at least until 2008 with that side of the list, but in some cases there were no follow-ups, partly because said poets didn't have  another full collection to put out. John James would be a case in point. They did follow-up volumes for Allen Fisher, Andrew Duncan, John Wilkinson, Simon Perril, Simon Smith, Peter Jaeger, Richard Berengarten (though he moved over here in 2011), Chris McCabe, Robert Sheppard, although I confess only two of that list are older than me….. There were also multiple volumes for some US and Australian authors, as well as for some UK newcomers whom you'd likely regard as mainstream voices. A few names swapped over to Shearsman, partly because of the perceived shift in Salt's area of interest; one or two went the other way.
>
>I couldn't tell you whether the follow-up volumes sold as well as the older ones. I suspect not, since Chris clearly sated that sales in that segment were badly down. He may have been over-egging it to justify the change of stance, but I doubt that's more than a small part of the overall story. In my view it is impossible to sustain a commercial publishing operation based on the sales of non-mainstream poetry, unless one is funded by the Arts Council. Shearsman survives only because I take nothing out of it by way of payment. If I did, it would go under quite rapidly. What can survive is a traditional small-press operation, which, in many ways, this still is, and which Reality Street, Equipage, etc, also are. What does change is technology of course -- I used to use a Gestetner machine and a golfball typewriter; now it's a Mac and Adobe software; but the basic principles remain. 
>
>Tony
>
>
>
>On 20 Jul 2013, at 19:29, David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for explaining that Salt’s early success was based on publishing much missed out of print books by well known avantgarde poets. Did they also publish these well known poets’ current work, and if so, did these sell or not?