Samantha Fabien has joined Laura Dail Literary Agency as international rights manager.
Former associate publishing manager at Viking Children’s Leila Sales has relocated to Austin, TX, where she will continue to edit select projects on Viking’s list, along with working on other editorial and writing projects.
Awards
The British Book Awards were presented on Monday, honoring both the trade and authors, with Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine named both debut of the year and book of the year.
Launching
Otto Penzler has started a new company, Penzler Publishers, now announcing its first imprint, American Mystery Classics. The line will focus on print editions of works by American writers from “the Golden Age of detective fiction.” Penzler notes in the announcement, “Reprints of Golden Age classics by British writers have been very successful, so it seems the time has come to recognize the best American authors of traditional detective fiction.”
Publishing in both hardcover and trade paperback editions, American Mystery Classics launches with six titles in October, distributed by Norton. Six more titles will follow in March 2019 and they expect to build to 24 titles a year in 2020. Charles Perry works alongside Penzler as publisher (he was managing editor of Penzler’s other mystery enterprises) and former HarperCollins ceo and co-founder of Open Road Jane Friedman is consulting.
Penzler tells us he set the company up as a new enterprise since “MysteriousPress.com and Open Road were designed to be electronic publishing companies and don’t have great infrastructure to distribute physical books.” He did discuss the program with Grove Atlantic, his current print partner for Mysterious Press, but they are “interested in new books and declined to be involved.” Penzler added, “Also, since I remain very active in acquiring, editing, and publishing original works, I thought it might be confusing to add reissues with originals.”
The launch titles — The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen, The So Blue Marble by Dorothy B. Hughes, Death from a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson, The Red Lamp by Mary Roberts Rinehart, Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice, and The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan by Stuart Palmer — are available as ebooks through MysteriousPress.com and Open Road, though Penzler said, “It is the plan (and hope) that other authors will be on the list (we will have an Erle Stanley Gardner title on the next list, who I do not have e-rights for). A lot will depend on availability of titles.”