After eight years, we've decided to look at moving Salt into offices in Fulbourn, a nearby village. So we're off down to the premises later this morning, the upper floor of a converted house in the village centre. We were always hugely opposed to renting premises (having to watch the pennies each month and wondering about the mortgage). But things are looking up and so we could be on the move.

The first question which arises is, "So what about staff, then?" We've always used suppliers and freelancers to handle pressure in the business. But with the programme growing and sales growing we also realise that we've reached another fork in the road for Salt: how to cope with administering the business. Our ACE funding ends in 2009 (when we'll be roughly the same size as Carcanet) and so whatever we do has to continue to develop sales and profits on our own.

Here's the question for those of you close enough to the publishing business: "If you took on staff to facilitate driving sales as fast as possible, what post, skills, qualities, background would you be looking for?" To add some context for that, we don't want to employ our costs, we want someone who will build revenue, though not necessarily directly. The objective is to achieve a £1M turnover by 2015.

Your chance to be consultants to Salt. Best piece of advice I read will get five free books of their choice.

You are the publishing expert, Chris, but to clarify: do you want staff to support the work you do in marketing the company? Do you want to be the main players in putting Salt 'out there'? Or is your feeling that you need someone with a marketing background to drive sales forward?

Hi there, we're torn really, we've discussed it (as you might imagine) a great deal. Do we need administration staff to free us up? Do we need publicists to support our marketing? Do we need publishing assistants to support our authors and editors? Do we need another editor with a £250K revenue target? Do we need regional managers in Scotland and Wales? As we move into fiction and crime fiction my feeing is we need support staff. But support staff don't add sales, but they may free us up to drive that. Selling is in my blood I've discovered so I can't imagine letting go of that. Just back from looking at the offices and they're perfect so we've made an offer. It feels like Salt is about to undergo a massive change.

I'd say to start with get admin staff who can really, really administer and value them. The worst organisations I've worked for have treated admin as glorified typists, whereras in the best work revolves around them. If you don't need to think about running the office you'll do twice as much.

I agree with Tim 100 per cent. That's always been my experience in newspapers and mags, anyway - get the admin staff right, and everyone else works 100 times better.

I am currently watching the meltdown of a voluntary sector organisation that has just won the contract to run the county drug services ... sudden massive expansion without the staff to support it and managers completely unable to manage change because they are too wrapped up in strategic planning.
With your background in publishing I'm sure you have all the answers; you've seen the mistakes and you know where the market is now. You also believe in your product and it would perhaps be difficult to trust anyone else with sales responsibility because their drive wouldn't/ couldn't equal your own. However, as Salt expands, will it be possible to remain Editor, Design Director, Marketing Executive, Sales Manager, PA, PR, Team Administrator and general dogsbody? I guess the moment has come when you have decided that you have to let go of some areas and I imagine you are thinking about the cost of administrators versus marketing experts.
As you know, my experience comes from a completely different field but I have witnessed death of organisations on a frequent bases, either because the people at the top are unconcerned about what is going on at a lower level or because the profile of the organisation isn't high enough. There is a real need inspirational leadership and an equal need for a high level of commuication and networking skills at every level. In your position I would be tempted to take on 'Trainees' to act as PAs and with a desire to learn every part of the buisness. They will be loyal and energetic because they can see themselves developing skills and career prospects all the time. They will also be cheap.

Omigod yes please do that. And pick me, pick me! ;)

Well, I actually know nothing about publishing, and thus can't really say anything useful. :unsure: But best of luck with Salt's future - I really admire what you're doing.

Well, thank you very much for that, Emily! I wouldn't want to distract you from the Classics Faculty (I used to work on an XML implementation of a new Greek Lexicon with the Faculty about seven years ago). Stay in touch, though.

I'm really grateful for these considered responses. Couldn't agree more about admin staff, and I hope have always valued staff at every level. I'll keep thinking this all through. The offices were perfect.

P.S. Re: developing a cult of personality and 'Chris Hamilton-Emery' brand: I would like to see you offer Arvon/ retreat style courses on a) making money from poetry and B) about making money from publishing. Charge loads of money and sell loads of Salt books (retreat style courses give a literally captive audience).

Good lord, I couldn't inflict that on anyone! I am considering a Poetry School session on marketing though. The main thing is to have fun and keep a sense of perspective on writing and marketing. It can very easily escalate into psychosis. I'm just about to install a study in the garden, and getting rid of Salt (well, from the house) is as much about getting back to writing. Considering all this reminded me how writing is about writing and publishing is about publishing, and though there's some cross over, the writer must focus on where their talent leads them, even if that's in the (seemingly) opposite direction of a perceived readership and a publisher. But that's another thread altogether. Admittedly, most of my professional life is about where the two coincide, but that's a small space in the Venn diagram.

Which I guess is why you decided to start Salt in the first place! As for 'inflicting' your knowledge and experience on anyone, I am sure there are loads of people who would be more than interested in what you have to say. I also think the 'psychosis' between publishing and writing is very interesting (can any writer/artist ever escape the thought of publication?) I think that tension between two directions in life can lead to the kind of awareness and discomfort that fuels creativity.

It is why I started Salt, yes (it seems terribly naive now), but as I was warned, it can simply take over one's creative life, and it has. My writing life pretty much ended (I like to think it was parked) perhaps two years ago now as Salt seemed to step up a gear; I just dabble really these days.

I tend to think that publishing is phenomenally boring for people outside of it. It's a different thing altogether to address those who want to be published about how it works, about power and patronage, friends, location and lots and lots of luck, and how to navigate the systems, and the like. (Most of publishing is actually quite dull procedural stuff.)

I'm sure that those tensions you mention matter though, that matrix between writing and publishing and readerships. It's a thread we've covered before on this board and very few people here would confess to writing for a readership. But a readership does bring with it some pressures, perhaps a pressure to repeat some effects, to confirm the trajectory of one's writing: I'm not sure that that's a good thing.

I don't know; to be honest, my readership as a "poet" is absolutely minute, almost certainly less than 50 people in the world. What I do worry about is those people who become completely obsessed with being published when it might never happen. And, to be, pragmatic about that, there's more to life than being published, but I'm very sympathetic for those that yearn to have a book out there.

As someone I admire remarked to me the other day, "I don't want to write the bloody books, I want to read them." I wish I heard that more often.

But for now, it's the business I want to sort out, and to find some balance between it and the creative life I still know is lurking. It's probably a mix of psychosis and vanity. (Or blind hope where I'm concerned.)

I think Neen wins, drop me a line with your address, and choose five Salt books you fancy, and I'll send 'em out, and I'll throw in a bag, too. Thanks for the feedback it was all terrific.

Thanks Chris! Though I am a little worried about your profit margins and am not sure you should be giving books away .......... ;)