Thursday 3 September 2009

Rebellion accquires Solaris Books.

Now I've written the title, I can't get Star Wars out of my head for some reason!

Anyway, here's the press release...

This week, Rebellion, Europe’s leading independent games developer and owner of the iconic comic 2000 AD and sci-fi and fantasy imprint Abaddon Books, completed the acquisition of the Solaris book publishing imprint from Games Workshop for an undisclosed sum.

This well-known and highly successful brand offers a mixture of new and traditional science fiction, fantasy and horror books and has many bestselling titles from both upcoming and established names such as Brian Lumley, Gail Z. Martin, Eric Brown and Simon R. Green, amongst others.

Solaris will sit alongside, and be run in parallel with, Rebellion’s own Abaddon Books.

Jason Kingsley, CEO of Rebellion said, “We’ve been aware of the Solaris imprint for some years now and have admired its success with fantastic stories and great writers. Acquiring Solaris will allow us to continue to push our publishing trajectory upwards and expand the quantity, whilst maintaining the quality, of all our titles.”

George Mann, Games Workshop’s Head of Publishing said, “We’re delighted that Solaris has found a new home with Rebellion. After a period of fantastic growth with our Games Workshop related titles, we decided the time was right for us to focus all of our attention on our Black Library imprint. We’re sure Rebellion will now take Solaris forward to even greater heights.”


I didn't see this one coming but Rebellion are doing a great job with Abaddon Books (as well as the 2000AD line) so there's no reason to think that they won't do the same with Solaris. Here's the bit that I like though...

Mark Chadbourn was a little worried that people wouldn't be able to get hold of 'Lord of Silence'. From the press release...

Rebellion has also entered into a sales and distribution agreement with Simon and Schuster. Under the agreement, Simon & Schuster will continue to handle sales, distribution and fulfilment of all Solaris titles for all new and backlist titles to trade and specialty accounts. The agreement is effective August 31st, 2009.

So if you don't already have a copy of 'Lord Silence' (Why not? It's great!) then hopefully you'll be able to get a copy in the future... :o)

5 comments:

Mark Chadbourn said...

Actually, they won't be able to get a copy of Lord of Silence, because, contractually, Solaris weren't allowed to sell it on along with the company stock!

Graeme Flory said...

Oh... I thought that 'Lord of Silence' was on the backlist and would still be good for distribution. Will it find a home anywhere else or is that it?

Mark Chadbourn said...

It may well find a home somewhere else - I have outlines for two more books with the characters/world, so there's lots still to tell.

Mark said...

I hope it does - it's a cracking read!

Anonymous said...

"I didn't see this one coming"

Me neither - I would have sworn blind that Angry Robot/Harper would have bought it out, seeing as Marc Gascgoine founded it in the first place.

After light Of Heaven, that's doubtless my chances of continuing to pitch to them killed stone fucking dead.