Bloomsbury buys Pavilion's Conway imprint

Bloomsbury has acquired naval and military history imprint Conway from Pavilion Books.

The publisher will incorporate Conway's 200 titles, which cover maritime, naval and military history, into its existing publishing programme, with the maritime part of its list sitting along sing Bloomsbury's Adlard Coles Nautical imprint. No sum was divulged for the sale.

Janet Murphy, director of Adlard Coles Nautical, said: "I have long admired [Conway's] breadth of range, thoroughness of content and stable of expert authors, and as such it will perfectly complement the long established Adlard Coles Nautical list, neatly extending our list into the areas of maritime and military history and exploration."

Bloomsbury chief executive Nigel Newton added: "We are fortunate to acquire such an excellent list as Conway with its fine authors, strengthening Bloomsbury’s significant presence in specialist publishing."

Last year, Bloomsbury acquired legal publisher Hart Publishing for £6.5m, as well as acquiring New Holland's natural history list. In 2012, the publisher bought Applied Visual Arts Publishing in a £1.7m deal.

The sale will see Conway publisher John Lee leave after 20 years at the role. He said in a statement: "I believe that we succeeded in my original aim of creating the finest books possible both for, and informed by, a specialist readership… This rare combination of bestselling and specialist has now been recognised by one of the world’s foremost independent publishers and a new chapter for Conway begins." He added that he was developing a new set of publishing projects.

Pavilion Book's David Graham said: "Whilst we are sad to part company with Conway which has been part of the Pavilion family for many years, we are delighted to have found such an excellent home for Conway’s authors. Bloomsbury’s expertise in special interest publishing is second to none and we look forward to seeing the Conway list - be it recent bestsellers like The Wiper’s Times or core backlist such as the Pocket Book series - flourish and thrive under Bloomsbury’s expert guiding hand.”

Bloomsbury said it would begin releasing titles from the Conway list later this year.

Pavilion was created last year in the rebranding of Anova Books, which followed the buyout of the company by chief executive Polly Powell.