Anne Perry to lead Quercus' new 'international and inclusive' SFF imprint Arcadia

Quercus is launching a new Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint, Arcadia, a rebrand of its Jo Flectcher Books (JFB) arm combined with the name of the independent publisher it acquired in 2021. The list will focus on "exceptional writing, representative voices and stand-out packages" and be led by publishing director Anne Perry, who joined Quercus in 2022 after JFB founder Jo Fletcher left the business. 

Quercus managing director Jon Butler said the move reflected an expansion of JFB under Perry’s leadership and a "global market for SFF...that is absolutely popping at the moment". He added: "While paying tribute to the significant foundations that Jo Fletcher built, it feels like time to reflect the list’s rapid evolution with a relaunch."

The imprint’s new name, website and fox logo designed by Andrew Smith will officially launch today (12th March) at the London Book Fair. Perry said: "As our SFF and genre publishing at Quercus has grown rapidly over the last couple of years, we felt it was time to overhaul our ambitions and our priorities, to bring them in line with the breakneck pace of change in the SFF publishing world overall."

The first title under the new logo will beThe Silverblood Promise by James Logan, the pseudonym of Orbit editor James Long, which Perry acquired last year. Perry said: "Silverblood... is the perfect novel to be our first book sporting the Arcadia fox. It’s beautifully written, totally immersive, fun, funny, and absolutely unforgettable."

The imprint will continue with many of JFB’s ongoing authors such as Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Andrew Caldecott, Adam Oyebanji and Melinda Taub as well as "introducing a slew of brilliant new voices to UK shelves".

Arcadia was launched by Gary Pulsifer in 1996 and had a largely literary and fiction and translation focus with successes including Richard Zimler’s The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, Tessa de Loo’s The Twins and Miklós Bánffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy. Pulsifer relinquished control of the independent in 2013 after his cancer diagnosis. He died in 2016. The list was run, and sold to Quercus, in its last decade by Piers Russell-Cobb at Media Fund. 

Butler said: “Arcadia became a byword for brave, quality publishing that launched many exciting new voices and was instinctively international and inclusive. We were lucky to acquire and fold that list into Quercus, but it’s always seemed a shame that we don’t make more use of the Arcadia name. We’re therefore resurrecting it as a frontlist imprint, marrying the spirit of the JFB list, the tremendous energy of Anne’s commissioning and the values of the original Arcadia to take our SFF publishing to a whole new level.”