Pan Macmillan has launched a new digital imprint, Bello, which will revive 20th century classics for a 21st century audience.
The publisher says all books included in Bello’s launch wave are drawn from the prestigious backlist of the Curtis Brown Literary and Talent Agency.
The imprint is designed to bring long out of print books by iconic authors to a new readership in the 21st century, and will make more than 500 more titles available in ebook format during the next twelve months.
Launch titles include Beasts in my Belfry, Catch Me a Colobus and The Drunken Forest as well as Ark on the Move by naturalist Gerald Durrell.
Also in the launch list are five titles by poet, novelist and gardener, Vita Sackville-West
2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the author’s death, and sees Macmillan’s Bello imprint revive her critically-acclaimed first novel, Heritage; two novellas, Seducers in Ecuador and The Heir; a novel, Family History, a wonderful evocation of the complexity of 1930s high society mores and values; and The Eagle and The Dove, a biography, long regarded as a classic, of Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.
A crime novel from behind the Iron Curtain by Andrew Garve, Murder in Moscow is also available in e-book, along with three novels from Pamela Hansford Johnson and Madensky Square, a rare novel for adults from children’s author, Eva Ibbotson.
Lee Durrell, Gerald Durrell’s widow and Honorary Director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, says: ”I am utterly delighted at this development. Everybody has been asking me when Gerry’s backlist is going digital, and it’s great that this is now happening.”
Sara Lloyd at Pan Macmillan says: “It’s a pleasure to be able to republish some great writers of earlier generations and to introduce them to modern audiences in 21st century style.”
Pan Macmillan says it expects ebook sales of its titles to more than triple in 2011 compared to 2010.
