Company Spotlight Pan Macmillan
THIS WEEK Hale sets sail with plan for Pan
Pan prepares to launches two new imprints—Tor Bramble and Tor Nightfire—as it gears up to celebrate 80 years in publishing
Philip Jones @philipdsjones
P
an Macmillan division Pan has launched two new imprints, both part
of Tor Books, as part of a further expansion of its commercial lists following an upsurge in sales of books within the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. The launches mark the beginning of a range of activities designed to celebrate Pan’s 80th anniversary. The division, the largest within Pan Macmillan, is now helmed by Lucy Hale, as its managing director. She told The Bookseller: “We outperform the market in most years—last year we grew 19% through the Total Consumer Market, 31% in fiction, and that was the fastest growth of any of the top five publishers. So we were pleased with that. It’s always been a bestseller-creating publisher, and continues to be.” Hale began her career at Pan Macmillan working in the export team. She was then at Hachete for 17 years, laterly as deput c.e.o. of Hodder & Stoughton, John Murray Press, Quercus and
Headline before returning to Pan Macmillan as Pan publisher in 2020. Hale now reports to Pan Macmillan c.e.o. Joanna Prior, following the impending retirement of Jeremy Trevethan, m.d. of adult publishing. The Pan division comprises three fiction imprints, Pan Fiction, Tor and Mantle and two non-fiction, Pan Non-Fiction and Macmillan Business, as well as hardback imprint Macmillan, home to fiction and non-fiction. Back in 2020, Pan, she says, “needed a bit of focus, and a bit of energy. We are a broad publisher, from Tor to Mantle, but also of business books, and serious non-fiction.” To emphasise this, she points to forthcoming publications from Angela Merkel in 2024, and next year from Nicola Sturgeon and Jacinda Ardern. On her return she says: “I love working in a small company again, where you can get things done. We are big, but not multi-divisional. We all sit in the same building and we don’t compete against each other. So we achieve a lot. We only sell our own books, while a big corporate will sell books from across other divisions. This size is a real advantage. We are big enough to have clout, but small enough to care. We have strength in all of our departments.”
PAN IS CELEBRATING IT’S 80TH ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR
TheBookseller.com
Last year was a good one as a lead into its big anniversary— fronted by commercial fiction successes including Lucinda Riley, David Baldacci, Ann Cleeves and Alexandra Poter and the explosion of Science Fiction and Fantasy genre successes at Tor including Cassandra Clare, Olivie Blake and Shelley Parker Chan as well as Mantle’s number one bestseller
LUCY HALE: “I LOVE WORKING IN A SMALL COMPANY AGAIN, WHERE YOU CAN GET THINGS DONE”
success with Kate Mosse’s The Ghost Ship. Tor’s two new imprints are Tor Bramble, a romantasy imprint that begins publishing in November, and Tor Nightfire, a horror imprint that kicks into life from January 2025. Both imprints will be led by Tor publisher Gillian Green, with the Tor team commissioning across Tor and the new lists, and run independently from the two already existing US imprints that share their names. Tor grew sales 33% in 2023, outperforming the wider SFF market.
On the rise of romantasy, Hale says many new acquisitions are being driven by younger editors who are tapped into those reading markets, and TikTok where a number of hits are born. “Those junior editors are supported from Joanna Prior (Pan Macmillan c.e.o.) downwards, and it is great to see them blossom.”
In some ways she sees this as a return to Pan’s heritage, which was always driven by commercial fiction. Pan Books began as an independent publisher, established in 1944 by Alan Bot, specialising, like Penguin, in paperbacks, and noted for its distinctive and colourful covers. Remarkably, when printing such books was not possible in the United Kingdom, Bot bought a
boat to bring them across from the continent. Hale says the navigator of that boat is still in touch, now aged 99.
It was money well steered with authors such as Ian Fleming, Douglas Adams, and James Herbert, Colin Dexter, Georgete Heyer, Jackie Collins, Shirley Conran and Dick Francis, later day stalwarts, giving way to today’s hit-makers Ken Follet, Peter James, Danielle Steel, Ann Cleeves, C J Sansom and Mosse. “We’d like non-fiction to be as big as the fiction list—about three quarters of the business,” says Hale, pointing to the recently announced acquisition of Rick Astley’s memoir, as well as the purchase of business list Harriman House last year. At its February part, the business will award a “Golden Pan”, instituted in 1962 for any Pan title selling over a million copies. Hale is tight-lipped on the recipient. The first Golden Pans were awarded in 1964 to Alan Sillitoe, Paul Brickhill, Grace Metalious (posthumously), and seven times over to Ian Fleming. Recent awardees were Joe Wicks, Jeffrey Archer, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. The past takes care of itself, of course. For Hale, “its really about the future, and what’s to come”.
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