A Publishers View Hamilton Emery

Jen Hamilton-Emery

A Publisher's View

We see short stories as one step away from poetry; the public and book world see them as one step away from novels

Oh to run your own business. Right now I’m up to my neck in the end-of-year accounts, joy of joys - they seem to be endless! However, in between hunting for receipts and bank statements, we are managing to send books to press; a step that marks the end of many months of editing, promoting, agonizing over punctuation and typesetting, and the beginning of that never-ending quest for sales, without which it is all pretty pointless.

Over the weekend I found myself pondering over our move into publishing short stories. Salt began its life as a book publisher in 2000 (it published journals for many years before that), focusing on poetry and poetics, but with the odd dabble into drama, biography, even Western Australian ecology(!). But short stories seemed to be the most logical fit.

A lot of poets also write short stories and it is a genre that the Salt team are all passionate about, either as practitioners or avid readers. Last year, 2006, saw us publishing the first of our short story collections and we have over a dozen books on this year’s list, with more lined-up for 2008.

So, how's it been then? Interesting question! What I hadn't realised was the difference in standing of the two genres. Poetry is generally very well supported: there are, for example, the Poetry Society and the Poetry Book Society in the UK, numerous websites (Poetry.org, Poetry Kit to name only two), many magazines all around the world that review poetry collections, listservs where people around the world can exchange views and network, and poetry is taught in schools.

Short stories on the other hand have very few advocates. There is, of course, the Story website at Booktrust [thanks Jen. Ed.], but apart from that, not a lot. Many magazines print short stories, but rarely do they review published collections, and at a practical level, it's really difficult often to even find short stories in bookshops - their shelf, or bit of shelf, is usually stuck in the darkest corner of the vast fiction area.

And, of course, there is the general attitude towards short stories to overcome. We were out at the weekend with some friends: one of them, a tired, over-worked doctor only reads short stories; another retired lady only reads full-length fiction and would never dream of reading a short story collection.

This, sadly, seems to be the consensus of opinion, but there are so many people like my doctor friend who are knackered and time-starved, for whom short stories would be perfect. Reaching out to them is our biggest challenge and possibly the genre's lifeline.

We see short stories as one step away from poetry; the public and book world see them as one step away from novels. This, I reckon, is the general crux of the matter: they have an identity crisis. Neither fish nor fowl, they don't easily fit and, perhaps because of this, are sadly misunderstood and overlooked, possibly by both camps.

So, what to do about it? Well, for us it's a case of Keep Going! There is such a wealth of talent out there and it is our absolute pleasure to put it into print and promote it. And we are very patient people. It's taken years to become recognised as a poetry publisher and we are quite willing to wait for the world to waken up to the joys of short fiction.

(May 2007)

Jen Hamilton-Emery

Jen Hamilton-Emery was born in Glasgow and has lived south of the border since 1988, firstly in Manchester and then in and around Cambridge. She spent 20 years working in hospitals and community settings before giving it all up to join Salt Publishing to work with her husband Chris and the wider Salt team. She has three children who she hopes will make their mark on the world.

Salt Publishing website