Tuesday, November 20, 2012

SCRIBE UK TO BE ESTABLISHED


Scribe Publications Pty Ltd, a multi-award-winning independent trade publisher based in
Melbourne, Australia, is to set up a UK office in the new year. Scribe’s sales and distribution
will be handled by the Faber Factory Plus organisation.

Scribe’s founder and publisher, Henry Rosenbloom, said, ‘I’ve been mulling over this move for a couple of years, as I was determined to find the best and most appropriate solution for our needs.
I’m delighted that we’ll be one of Faber Factory Plus’s clients, and that we’ll be able to join the
ranks of the UK’s notable independent houses that I’ve long admired from afar.
‘This is a big step for a small company to take, but the reasons for it are compelling, on both the
buying and selling sides. It will give us the capacity to acquire UK and Commonwealth rights in
some overseas-originated titles that would otherwise be denied us; and it also means that many more of our books, which come from many sources, will be available in much of the English reading world.

‘Starting next June, we’ll be publishing 20–30 books a year in the UK, drawn from our local and
international authors. Among our first titles will be JM Coetzee: a life in writing, by JC Kannemeyer, the first-ever biography of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author; Futurevision: scenarios for the world in 2040, by London-based Richard Watson and his Australian co-author Oliver Freeman; and Cate Kennedy’s latest collection of short stories, Like a House on Fire.
‘I’m also delighted to announce that we’ve appointed Rina Gill as our publicity director. Rina,
who won the UK Publicist of the Year Award in 2010, and the award for the best hardback
non-fiction campaign in 2008, is a former publicity director for Corvus, deputy publicity director
for Cornerstone, and publicity director for Century.’
Will Atkinson, the sales and marketing director and director of independent publishing services
at Faber and Faber Ltd, said, ‘Henry embodies all that is great about independent publishing.
Scribe Publications have consistently represented the highest of standards throughout their long and distinguished history. We are immensely proud to be partners and to be able to bring Scribe to readers in the UK.’

Scribe has won the Australian Small Publisher of the Year Award four times since its inception
in 2006. It is best known as the original publisher of Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, and
for its record-breaking sales of the popular-science title The Brain that Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge. Earlier this year, it published Katherine Boo’s acclaimed work of immersive journalism, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which has just won the US’s National Book Award for non-fiction and was shortlisted for the UK’s Samuel Johnson Prize.

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