You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Bloomsbury is launching a new popular science imprint, Bloomsbury Sigma.
The imprint will be headed in London by Jim Martin, currently senior commissioning editor of the publisher’s natural history lists, and will release around 15 titles a year to be released through Bloomsbury’s London, New York, Sydney and New Delhi offices. It will launch in October 2014.
Martin said he hoped Bloomsbury Sigma would “bring new and dynamic authors to a broad audience”.
The imprint will focus on narrative works. Titles already signed include Sex on Earth by Jules Howard, a study of sex in all its forms across the natural world, “from its beginnings to the present day”. Also signed is Dr Victoria Herridge’s The World’s Smallest Mammoth, a book-length study of memmuthus creticus, an extinct species that once lived in Crete.
Bloomsbury executive director Richard Charkin said: “In a world dominated by technological change and scientific advances, enthusiasm for understanding science is at an all-time high. Bloomsbury Sigma feeds into that bloom of interest, and heralds the arrival of a new generation of popular science writers.”
In September this year, Bloomsbury acquired the natural history list of publisher New Holland, expanding its own natural history publishing by more than 200 titles.
Bloomsbury cited a growth figure of 8% year on year for the popular science market between 2012 and 2013.
Nielsen BookScan TCM figures for popular science sales in the UK show a 2% decline in value terms in 2013.