Bloomsbury Publishing Launches Academic Imprint

Bloomsbury Publishing is launching into academic publishing with a new imprint: Bloomsbury Academic. The imprint will initially publish in the Humanities and Social Sciences building thematic lists on pressing global issues, with approximately fifty new titles online and in print by the end of 2009.

Bloomsbury Academic will be using a radically new model. All titles will be made available free of charge online, with free downloads, for non-commercial purposes, immediately upon publication, using Creative Commons licences. The works will also be sold as books, using latest short-run technologies or Print on Demand (POD).

Frances Pinter will be Bloomsbury Academic’s Publisher, joining Managing Director Jonathan Glasspool.

The Bloomsbury Academic platform (http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/) will also be available to showcase and promote other publishers' titles. The initiative is not exclusively in the English language and Bloomsbury’s German partner, Berlin Verlag, will be participating actively. Neither is the programme geographically bound with Bloomsbury USA involved in North America and we are in discussion with Melbourne University Publishing to showcase the best of Australian scholarship.