Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians, founders of U.S. independent publishing house Melville House, have announced they’re opening a British publishing company, Melville House UK, to be headquartered in London.
The new company will, at first, market the U.S. firm’s titles, but will move into acquiring its own line by the end of the year. “It’s time,” says Johnson. “Our classics line, The Art of the Novella, has always done well in Britain, but sales of our other U.S. titles have grown explosively there over the last few years, some of the best writing we’ve published lately has been by British writers, such as Lars Iyer and Lee Rourke; we’re winning British book awards, I hear more and more from British booksellers and media about our books … And so rather than simply expand our U.S. company’s operations here, we wanted to form a distinctly British company that would respond more particularly to that kind of welcome. It’s not a branch, nor an office. It’s a distinct, British company.”
Running the office will be director of marketing, Zeljka Marosevic, who joins the firm from 4th Estate, where she was a marketing executive.
