blog.saltpublishing.com

Talk to enough literary publishers and you could be forgiven for thinking that they must sit, besuited, listening to dirges on their 1970s radiograms as they squat in cellar offices pondering, with funereal solemnity, the future of serious literature. They’d have to squat, of course, because they’re quite likely to be surrounded by boxes of [...]

Books down, computers off – now is the time to get out and pick some sloes. Sloe gin is an excellent preventer of colds over the winter, so you are only helping the health economy by making and drinking lots of it.

1 litre (2 pints) sloes
1 litre (2 pints) gin (the cheapest you can [...]

When I was a young art student, most of our progressive ideals were fed by an understanding that we were somehow at war with the academics. I guess this was a kind of nineteenth century art lesson, one which had been fully adopted within those commercial narratives about the birth of modernism; it was the [...]

Fried pie, anyone?

Since leaving Cambridge University Press my body appears to have unhatched a plan to make its bulk fill the home office. Like I need to be cuboid, rather than cuddly human shaped. Now, the dining room we converted to Home Orifice is the size of a Toyota Landcruiser and my arse can just [...]

Sales

What are sales for?
Sales are what we crave.
They seem to torment us
Time and time over.
They are to be driven by:
How can we live without sales?

Ah, solving that question
Leaves the Board of Directors
More desperate each month
Addressing the stocks.

It seems to me that every day our minds and bodies are further bound to the routine of [...]

Now reading books for pleasure is rapidly becoming a thing of the past; this needs sorting out. You know, getting curled up on the sofa, glass of Sancerre, Tippett on the stereo, dog on the throw. I can’t remember when reading for pleasure took centre stage in the home office, as indulgence, now it’s a [...]

A beautiful day here in Great Wilbraham. Everyone’s at home. Hang the washing out and sit in its shade to proofread forthcoming Best Seller. Instruct two older children to clean out the guinea pigs and leave son number two in the hands of Chris. Ignore the hammering noises and constant complaining coming from the hutches [...]

DCMS is busying itself to manage British culture, change copyright law and turn us all into yoof junkies. At a DTI presentation this week I sat before the ministers and mandarins trying to reconcile creativity with white men in suits. Well, there were some women. One and a half, as Margaret Hodge turned up late. [...]

Between author meeting with Major Talent in PoSoc Caff and Board meeting in Bedford Square decide to audit latest poetry holdings on Charing X Rd and supply posters of recent bestseller.

Foyles busy poetry section filled with shining examples from Salt; leave with glowing reappraisal of trade sales and clear visions of major trade expansion. Dodge [...]

The slush pile has now grown to the height of Son No.2. CDs and shrink-wrapped books topple from the edges of the paper mountain. Letters to “Deer editor” explain “i am grate poet, plese read my works and publish it, i pay good money, please send books to . . .” Fresh moments of despair [...]