Background
Salt Modern Voices is a brand new series from Salt which aims to deliver short works to new readerships around the world. These works may be interim or more fugitive publications, experiments or side-projects which have a distinctive literary merit, or they may be the initial works of new talents, issued like an EP prior to the development of a full-length collection and aimed at breaking new talent and building reception for the writer (at any stage of their career). The series will be for poetry and fiction.
Scope of the series
Salt Modern Voices will be low price editions, sold primarily through online retailers, for example, Amazon. The books will not be priced or produced for retail sales in bricks and mortar shops (i.e. repped, held in stock and conventionally distributed, with all those concomitant costs, high discounts and returns).
Titles will only be marketed on the Web and in the context of our emerging Salt Cellars outreach programme of readings, events and workshops, in which writers will be encouraged to participate, collaborate and develop.
Print products will be B format (198 x 129mm) 48pp perfect bound paperback chapbooks, priced at £6.50 or $9.95. Pricing will be the same for any format. In order to keep costs to a minimum, the books will be produced in a standard series design. Authors will have no role to play in the design or manufacture of their print or eBook products.
The books will be issued with standard Salt contracts and authors will be paid royalties. However, there will be no advances.
Risk and innovation
The programme is designed to allow Salt to take greater risks with literature and to find a way of expanding readership with attractively-priced products that allow readers to take a risk on a new writer, helping them to discover more about their work, its range and diversity. The programme will extend to publish around 12 titles per year.
Author information
Salt will commission writers into this programme, we will not accept submissions. Talent-spotting will be linked closely to our developing Salt Cellars, initially in the UK, though we plan to extend this programme internationally over the coming years.
We may also make use of scouts and work with other (i.e. non-Salt) literary programmes, workshops, prizes and Creative Writing degrees. There will be no fee to join the programme and Salt will publish writers at their own risk. In addition, we will work with writers and teachers in local communities to identify potential candidates and will, as always, take recommendations (details of which are on our Web site).
Writers selected, and who agree to take part in the new series, will be asked to submit twenty-four poems or an equivalent number of short stories (depending on length) to Salt who will begin work on editing and preparing a final manuscript. The editing process may extend over a period of time.
Once we have jointly agreed upon the final edited content, Salt will issue a contract and take the book into production. At that point authors will be formally required to sign with Salt and complete an author questionnaire as well as provide additional materials (i.e. photographs) to help us effectively market your book. Salt will commit to publish the ork within six months.
It is essential that authors have a substantial online presence and are willing to read at local events. We strongly welcome Salt authors and others in the literary community collaborating with each other to help us widen interest in this important new venture.
Discover the Salt Modern Voices Series today by clicking here.
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