Just One Book

I'm sorry to say that the recession has bitten so deeply into book sales generally that my wonderful publisher Salt is in financial difficulties again. For this reason they are resurrecting the JustOneBook campaign, and asking people to buy just one Salt book, since if enough people did this, Salt could be saved from disaster. There was such a marvellous response last year, and Salt was saved - it really did work. People showed that they really did care about Salt books and were committed to keeping alive this small but phenomenal literary publisher, and I'm so grateful. I had a vested interest, of course, as the fate of Too Many Magpies was in the balance, and so my gratitude is highly personal - it's down to all those of you who weighed in and bought Salt books that it was eventually published. I often think of that when I'm reading from it, or when I get a nice review for it; I think of how, if people hadn't supported Salt at that time, this just wouldn't be happening. Once again I have a book in the balance: the reissue of The Birth Machine in October/November depends of course on Salt's survival, so once again my plea is personal. But it's also more generally literary: there are so many Salt books already in print and about to be published that the world would be poorer without.

So please do buy a Salt book if you can - from anywhere, your independent bookshop, Amazon, The Book Depository or direct from Salt. Above is a selection of my own Salt Library - it's so precious I keep it by my bed - and I can recommend any one of these.