In a non-specific first quarter trading update–generally used to assure investors that everything is great–Bloomsbury announced that they will launch their own Australian division in January 2011. Current marketing director of Bloomsbury UK Kathleen Farrar will be managing director of the new unit. Their longtime Australian distributor Allen & Unwin will provide sales and distribution services to the new company.
Update
Sc-fi/horror publisher Night Shade Books is launching Pugilist Press, focused on “contemporary literary fiction with an edge.” Juliet Ulman is editor-in-chief of the new line, with Night Shade founder Jason Williams as publisher. Ulman had been at Bantam Dell for 11 years. Launching in fall 2011, they will publish 14 to 16 books year in trade paperback. Ulman says they are looking for “tough literary fiction with a certain honesty and texture to it. Think Cormac McCarthy, Harry Crewes, Gustav Hasford, Lionel Shriver, Dennis Lehane, Ernest Hemingway. Writers whose stories are extremely well-crafted, but who deal in a narrative style and subject matter that is direct, gritty, and often painful.”
We had a case of errant fingers yesterday. The print edition of JR Konrath’s new book with Amazon Encore will follow the Kindle edition in February 2011 (not 2012).