Orion closes e-only imprint The Murder Room

Orion has decided to close its e-only vintage crime imprint The Murder Room, resulting in the redundancy of its publisher, Julia Silk.

The closure means Silk, publisher for the list, will leave at the end of this month following a decade in editorial roles at Orion.

The Murder Room launched at Scottish crime festival Bloody Scotland in September 2012, complete with 115 newly acquired e-books and 25 titles from Orion’s existing Crime Masterworks list, with the intention of growing to 1,400 titles by 2014.

It launched The Murder Room after Gollancz's success with its science-fiction and fantasy library, the SF Gateway, in 2011.

Silk, responsible for building up the site's content, said at the time of launching in 2012, "I haven’t accepted everything I’ve been offered. There has to be boundaries, because the books still have to have relevance. Some of these titles went out of print for a reason".

The resurgence of golden age crime was blogged about only in July, but, according to Orion, "the market is not as bouyant" as anticipated.

Orion provided this statement: "We have decided to close The Murder Room, a digital only, deep backlist imprint specialising in vintage crime.  After three years, it is clear that the market is not as buoyant as we’d anticipated in this area of deep backlist and we do not see the potential for this changing.  We are very sorry to say that this means is that Julia Silk, publisher of the Murder Room, will be leaving Orion at the end of this month."