In the Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry and the Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, both published in 2013, Salt Publishing is held up as a success story, a small poetry press that survives by making the most of newly available technologies. Since its start in 2000, Matthew Sperling writes in the Oxford volume, ‘Salt dramatically expanded its poetry list, keeping large numbers of titles available using print- on- demand technology, and rivalling presses such as Bloodaxe and Carcanet as one of the major independent poetry publishers.’ In the Cambridge book, Hank Lazer also describes Salt as a ‘leader’ in the use of ‘the small- batch print- on- demand model, which allows a publisher to create many titles per year’. In hindsight, the relationship between Salt's growth and its use of print- on- demand offers a dramatic example of the conflicting ways in which old and new technologies have been regarded by poetry communities in recent years. As just one of these technologies, print- on- demand – used to produce single copies of a book at relatively low cost – allows small publishers to expand their catalogues without having to estimate the right size for traditional print- runs or bear the costs of storing inventory. But like other technological developments, print- on- demand has also become a short- hand for more complex structural changes by those either optimistic or wary about its implications.

When Salt suddenly announced the closure of its poetry list in May 2013, the same year these positive accounts were published, the news was generally received as another sign of poetry's commercial downturn, in the face of funding cuts and declining sales. Media coverage cited falling trade for UK poetry books in each of the previous three years, including ‘a major drop of 18.5% volume and 15.9% value in 2012’. Salt's director, Chris Hamilton- Emery, emphasised the market's ‘sharp decline’ in his own statements. ‘As a very small, nice commercial publisher,’ he explained, ‘we can't possibly sustain what we have done in the past.’ For others, however, Salt's fate was less a problem of being stuck in the past than it confirmed suspicions towards the new technologies that Salt had led the way in adopting.