in the states there's nothing exotic about this. For a press to get large grants it needs to produce a lot of books, which means more and more has to be done by paid inhouse staff our outsourced. In the rum days of large grants some of th larger smallpresses went from budgets of 20K with a 5K annual loss to budgets of 500K with a 5k loss.
-----Original Message-----
>From: Wolfgang Görtschacher <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Jul 19, 2013 4:15 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Fwd: Salt poetry editor Roddy Lumsden=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=comments about the BritPo list.
>
>Dear All,
>
>let me say how grateful I am that colleagues now openly discuss the
>matter and not just send private replies.
>
>I may be ill informed but I had thought they had bought themselves at
>least the equipment to do the typesetting. The cover design is done by a
>firm calling themselves The Cover Factory, whoever that is. I am just
>wondering what they have actually done themselves in terms of
>production. Have they just read the submissions, decided what to publish
>and all the rest was outsourced? Then I really understand why all the
>money is gone. Perhaps even more so when they paid themselves salaries
>for reading and selecting the manuscripts on top of it. Anyway, thank
>you all for the information that I have received so far - I am very
>grateful.
>
>Perhaps Salt will remain in our minds as THE prototypical poetry
>publisher - prototypical in how to invest £180.000 within a short period
>of time and not to survive as a poetry publisher.
>
>Wolfgang
>
>
>Am 19.07.2013 21:49, schrieb Mark Weiss:
>> Some of it may have gone for those hardcovers Tony mentioned. But here's the bottom line costs. Even if you only print one copy each time you need it you stillhave to pay for design and for the printer's setup time. Salt was churning out an amazing number of books.
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: David Lace <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Jul 19, 2013 3:44 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: Fwd: Salt poetry editor Roddy Lumsden=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=99s_?=comments about the BritPo list.
>>>
>>> Yes, Wolfgang, I remember that discussion you mention three years ago. When I heard that Salt had got a £180.000 grant I couldn’t understand it, and why it would cost so much to churn out PODs which are cheap to do. That’s why publishers do PODs to begin with. Salt only recently stopped doing PODs. During Salt’s peak, the period we are talking about, they were very much doing them. Can anyone here explain this? Those in the know. How can £180.000 be spent a year on PODs, with no money going on marketing to promote each poet, with each poet told by Salt they have to self-promote.
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