Bloomsbury has acquired Switzerland’s Applied Visual Arts Publishing for approximately £1.73 million in cash in three annual installments. The company publishes 20 to 30 books a year by academics for students and professionals in the applied visual arts and recorded sales of £1.82 million in 2011. Bloomsbury’s head of visual arts Kathryn Earle will run the line as part of their Academic & Professional division. The company promises synergies with other recent acquisitions such as Fairchild Books and the forthcoming Fashion Photography Archive as well as the existing Berg and Visual Arts list.
Indiana University has established a new Office of Scholarly Publishing, which will take over operational responsibilities for IU Press and other digital initiatives. The goal is “to strengthen IU’s central missions of scholarship and teaching and create a model of effective, sustainable 21st-century academic publishing.” Executive associate dean of the IU Libraries Carolyn Walters is executive director of the new office. The press publishes about 140 new books annually, in addition to 29 journals, and maintains a backlist of about 2,000 titles.
Farrar, Straus president Jonathan Galassi, philanthropist Teresa Melhado, and businessman Theodore C. Rogers (whose current board appointments include Poets and Writers) have joined the board of Words Without Borders.