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Independent publisher Salt has relaunched its "Just One Book" campaign after a tough first half of the year has left them with "less than one week's cash left", despite its grant from Arts Council England.
The "Just One More Book" campaign officially launched this week, and the company needs to sell roughly £45,000-worth of books to keep afloat for the rest of the year. Publishing director Chris Hamilton-Emery said the company had not wanted to repeat the initiative "because we thought it was unrepeatable, but we have just reached crunch time this week". He added: "We realised if we didn't get some sales, we would probably go bust very shortly."
Hamilton-Emery said a number of factors had contributed to Salt's financial woes, including the recession, the World Cup and the demise of Borders UK late last year. "They were a good customer of ours, so that was a real blow," he said.
Salt had been planning to shift the focus of the business towards more mainstream trade publishing, which would see titles delayed until November this year, but Hamilton-Emery said he was unsure there was enough money to keep running that long. "We knew it was going to be tough. But the decline in sales mean it is going to be tougher.
"We are just hoping if we can survive until November our trade list will start kicking off... This is the year we are going to change the direction of the business: we are just hoping we can hang in there long enough to do it."
The new focus includes an all-new romance list, called Embrace Books, which will be edited by Jane Holland. It will focus on two strands; Red Velvet, which features "feisty heroines and believable Alpha males within contemporary, historical and paranormal lines"; and After Dark, which comprises "unusual storylines within contemporary, historical, paranormal and same sex categories. These will include explicit sex, which in some cases may be central to the plot".
Embrace joins Salt's children's poetry list, which Hamilton-Emery said was doing well so far with libraries and schools. "We are hoping these components by the end of this year will have created a stable business – our problems is how we get to the end of this year," he added.
Salt, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this weekend, has received "a very significant response" in the 24 hours the campaign has been running.