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.

The Crafty Writer’s guest poetry tutor, Andrew Philip, is published by Salt.  He says:  “It’s harder and harder these days for authors – début authors and mid-listers in particular – to find publishers. The big houses are taking on fewer writers and concentrating their marketing power on certain titles in their lists. So writers need publishers such as Salt more than ever. Publishers who don’t simply bend to the howling winds of celebrity memoirs. Publishers who will take a risk on writing they simply believe in. Publishers who believe in you and give readers the chance to let your voice enter their hearts and minds. If Salt goes, we all lose.”

Writers and book lovers are being asked to buy just one book to help save Salt, Andy recommends:

• Short Circuit: A Guide to the Art of the Short Story, ed. Vanessa Gebbie
• The White Road and Other Stories by Tania Hershman: wonderful science-inspired short and flash fiction (read an interview with Tania on Andy’s blog)
• The Opposite of Cabbage by Rob A Mackenzie: lively, imaginative, inventive new poetry from Scotland
• Off Road to Everywhere by Philip Gross: children’s poetry from the recent TS Eliot prize winner
• Lions in Winter by Wena Poon: vivid, engaging stories that capture the true urban sophistication of New Asia

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The Angel Animals Network 2010 True Story Contest is now accepting submissions of true stories of animals helping children, parents, and families deal with difficult situations and circumstances. Animals featured can be dogs, cats, horses, gerbils, rabbits, ferrets, or any house pet or animal in nature. They can be family pets or therapy, assistance, or service animals.

The stories can be written by parents or guardians of children or by the children or teens themselves. Stories can also be written by adults who recall a special animal from childhood or teen years who helped them through a tough period.

This contest hopes to find real-life stories that demonstrate animals comforting and helping to heal children during everyday ups and downs or traumatic events such as divorce or other losses. The stories can depict how children and teens de-stress with animals while learning valuable life lessons.  The deadline is 15 September 2010. For more details visit Angel Animals.

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How do you men actually read a ‘men’s magazine’ and just what is the market for male readers in 2010? Asking myself this question I gradually realised the nature of actually being a man has a lot to answer for here, as well as the ways in which so called ‘identity politics’ have fragmented and disrupted the very nature of masculinity and its once dominant presence in mass popular culture.

In these days of niche markets and sub-sub-cultures you most certainly have to be defined or targeted as a particular type of reader before you even pick up the latest copy of this or that, and on page after page your own desires and anxieties as that reader are satisfyingly relayed back to you. Or are they?  

Case study 1 – yours truly! – I am 31, white, largely middle/professional class in terms of job, flat, and the car I drive and to add insult to injury when I sift through the piles of magazines that seem to gather next to my loo or by the side of my sofa that identity is reinforced for me.

GQ, Esquire, Men’s Health and the occasional copy of Attitude or GT (the old title of Gay Times deemed to be just too ‘Gay’ these days!) give me back all that I seem to want out of life, love and happiness when it is branded, advertised and airbrushed. The reiteration and reinforcement of all that is stereotypically ‘me’ effortlessly sounds out page after page and it’s hard to resist the latest commodity that would either look great in my flat or even better on me.

I am also part of that demographic of men who are safe and appealing to the market because we buy, and there is nothing better than a savvy yet simultaneously seducible male consumer to keep the capitalist barometer going. I am also led into believing that I am unique, that this latest bottle of Tom Ford encapsulates who I am or that I really need a Paul Smith dressing gown and once again my role and my purpose is neatly contained and sustained for me. Phew, rant (almost) over but hopefully point conveyed!

But what of the men’s magazines that do not speak to me?  The ones I see arrogantly and seamlessly standing on the shelves of WH Smith’s but intentionally turn away from because they are too blatant, too laddish and let’s face it, just too degrading to women. The cheaply produced weekly ordeals in boobs, football and extreme injuries or activities in far-off (their words not mine!) uncivilised lands sell like hotcakes and the ways in which men are addressed could not be further away from the fashion and lifestyle-based stuff I consume.

But maybe that’s the key: the construction and aspiration for a ‘lifestyle’ or rather ‘lifestyles’ that can be viewed and manipulated from a distance. Men’s magazines (in fact all magazines) are just like pornography; they don’t answer back, they don’t laugh at you, they momentarily satisfy until the next desire comes along.

So what’s going on here? Not everyone draws out the same thing from the magazines that they buy and if they did the world would be incredibly banal, so looking again I tried to unpick what unites these very different sorts of men’s magazines and the place I got back to was not identity, not lifestyle but sex!

Thinking and looking – again the objectification of women and more blatantly men in the gay publications –  the assumption that readers are gendered and sexualised in a particular way seems to haunt each and every representation, article, photograph. Whilst social, economic and political roles and contexts have shifted we still as men, and probably more so as women, live with the problematic fact that ‘Sex Sells’!

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“I’m pretty much easy on subjects:  funny, light-hearted, twist-in-the-tale, thought provoking, crime, sci-fi, things along those lines. Nothing dark, heavy of graphically hideous! As for poets, as long as the poem fits on an A4 sheet, it should be fine,” says Vivienne. Unfortunately, they don’t accept writing for children at this time

There is a print and electronic version of the magazine which comes out bi-monthly. It’s published in the UK but accepts submissions from abroad. There is no payment for publication, but if you would like to showcase your writing, this may be an outlet for you.  Good luck!

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