Salt is one of Britain’s great independent publishing houses, committed to the discovery and publication of contemporary British literature. We are advocates for writers at all stages of their careers and ensure that diverse voices can be heard in an abundant, global marketplace.
We also believe books cannot succeed without being discovered, so we invest heavily in finding audiences through direct engagement, through the quality of our editing, design and manufacturing, and through creative sales, communication and publicity. Good publishing is participative and inclusive, yet dependent on judgement and, of course, you, the reader.
Salt was founded in 1999. Our first publications were poetry and we rapidly developed an award-winning international list. We went on to win the Nielsen Innovation Award in the IPG’s Independent Publishing Awards in 2008 for our work in taking poetry to new audiences. Salt’s publishing soon expanded to include children’s poetry, Native American poetry, Latin American poetry in translation, poetry criticism, essays, literary companions, biography, theatre studies, writers’ guides and poetry chapbooks as well as a ground-breaking series of eBook novellas. By the end of 2010 we had published over 1,000 products and sold them internationally.
Over twenty-five years, our poets have won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry (Australia), the Glen Dimplex Poetry Award (Ireland), the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry (Ireland), the CLPE Poetry Award (UK), the Oklahoma Book Awards (USA), as well as being shortlisted in the Forward Prizes, the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Guardian First Book Award and the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards (Australia).
In 2011, we began to focus our efforts on developing our fiction list. Since that time we have achieved considerable critical success in numerous literary awards and we have twice been nominated for the Booker Prize.
Additionally, we have won the Polari First Book Prize (three times), the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award (twice) and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
Our authors have also been nominated in the National Book Awards and shortlisted in the Costa Book Awards.
Today, Salt is considered one of Britain’s great independent publishing houses — a growing business that has an international impact.
