From the press release:
MOMENTUM, Pan Macmillan Australia’s new digital-only imprint, has launched today with 22 ebooks available for sale. Pan Macmillan is the first major book publisher in Australia to launch a digital-only list. Momentum’s list is an exciting and vibrant mix of books from established and emerging authors. Publishing ebooks and utilising print-on-demand (POD) technology, Momentum aims to make new and old books more accessible than ever before.
Momentum combines all the editorial expertise of a traditional publishing house with strong and highly focused marketing and promotion. The dynamics of ebook publishing allow Momentum to publish globally and at highly accessible prices, with new titles under $10 and previously published titles under $5.
The first releases from Momentum include new books by bestselling Australian authors Andy Griffiths and Greig Beck plus a debut novel by Indian writer Mini Nair. February will also see the release of several previously published titles, including the original Mark “Chopper” Read titles, which were turned into the cult-classic film Chopper, as well as a fantasy series by Louise Cusack.
In the coming months, Momentum will be releasing new works by John Birmingham, Liz Byrski, Tizzie Hall, plus many other new and established authors.
Greig Beck, author of the bestsellers Dark Rising and This Green Hell, said: “Pan Macmillan, by creating Momentum, is the only large publisher to listen to their readers and meet that challenge – books faster, books cheaper, no-wait delivery, but still with all the professional editing and polishing that can be missing from many do-it-yourself e-offerings.”
John Birmingham, who will be publishing several novellas with Momentum later this year said, “This is so cool, so inevitably going to be awesome, that if Pan hadn’t gone there, I was totally gonna go all wildcat and do it myself. It means writers can experiment in ways that just aren’t possible when you’re betting the mortgage on a book that took four years to write. It’s almost an insurgent style of doing things that you wouldn’t expect to see from one of the older and most successful publishing houses. But because Pan are so long lived and successful they bring skills and possibilities to the process that garage-based publishing can’t match. This is the stuff the reader never sees, the editing, the production, the marketing. It feels like the future just caught up with us.”
Momentum will also give some books a second chance at success. Louise Cusack, whose Shadow Through Time trilogy was released five years ago, said: “The series hadn’t sold internationally despite Australian readers loving it, and the Doubleday Book Club selecting it as their ‘Editor’s Choice’. Then the ebook revolution started, I got my first Kindle and began to dream of other fantasy romance readers around the world finding my trilogy and loving it. Now, thanks to Momentum that dream is being realised.”